How the Crusaders won their way back to Super Rugby Pacific pinnacle with future bright
Monday, 23 June 2025
ANALYSIS: Rob Penney broke from his dressing room dance routine after the Crusaders’ Super Rugby Pacific final triumph to offer a potentially ominous warning to the rugby dynasty’s rivals.
It wasn’t quite a case of “you ain’t seen nothing yet’’, but while Penney’s players were exuberantly celebrating a record-extending 15th title, their head coach said: 'There are some people here that are going to be here for a long time; we’re excited about what the future holds.”
A fortnight ago, vanquished Queensland Reds coach Les Kiss said of the Crusaders that “culture oozes out of the walls here’’.
It wasn’t just culture in the Crusaders sheds after Saturday night’s 16-12 win over the Chiefs in a gripping grand final between Super Rugby’s two best teams.
There were jets of bubbly too as the players, coaches and support staff quaffed, posed with the trophy and belted out Drift Away, the old Dobie Gray hit, soon after Penney had chugalugged a can of beer and told Three News, “it didn’t touch the sides’’.
But it’s care, not beer that drives the Crusaders although there was plenty of the latter sunk long into the night.
A brotherly bond inspired the players to extend their 32-match winning streak in home playoffs matches and to erase the 2024 nadir as an historical blip.
As captain David Havili noted, “we’re a different beast in the playoffs”, and at Apollo Projects Stadium. “It’s a tough place to play and it’s just so cool to be able to get it done for our fans in the last time in this stadium”.
Havili and countless Crusaders also spoke of their desire to “do it for Pens”, who the skipper said, “was dragged through it last year. To come out the other side with the title is pretty special.”
There was also real resolve to deliver for the 17,000-plus fans bellowing them to victory and for legions of past Crusaders champions.
Saturday’s victory - rated “one of the best ever’’ by chief executive Colin Mansbridge - was eerily similar to the turnaround in 2002 when Robbie Deans’ Crusaders swept to the title unbeaten after a 10th-place slump in 2001 following three titles.
Penney’s Class of ‘25 showed the same resolve after their own 10th-place finish in 2024 after seven championships on the bounce, and he admitted they had referenced the “01-02’’ group’s revival.
A former Canterbury captain, big on tradition, Penney said Crusaders teams “go deep every time. That goes right back to Smithy [Wayne Smith] and Robbie [Deans] and the guys they had. They went deep to set the standard and we are just on the shoulders of that.” The 2025 group wanted to “try and emulate what they did and try to live up to their high expectations”.
Havili - who had fought back from a first-half yellow card for a high shot and a “nervous” head injury assessment - “knew we had the group to do it, the experience, the youth. We just had to believe throughout the year and we found momentum.”
The influence of Havili - a first-year captain and the first back to lead the Crusaders to a title _ cannot be under-estimated. He, hooker Codie Taylor and All Blacks captain Scott Barrett- who all collected their eighth winners’ medal in nine years - galvanised the group along with vice-captains Will Jordan and Ethan Blackadder.
Taylor, who scored the Crusaders’ only try and helped make a try-saving tackle, said “you’ve got to step up in finals footy. It was up to us as leaders to make sure we all performed, and I feel like all of us did.
“It’s all about pressure. You have to nail those pressure moments. I felt like we won more moments … and that’s what got us home.”
As much as 11 past or present All Blacks led the charge, the Crusaders also got great contributions from first-time champions like man-of-the-match goalkicker Rivez Reihana, nuggety halfback Noah Hotham, bolter lock Antonio Shalfoon - in his first season as a fulltime pro - winger Macca Springer and second rower Jamie Hannah.
Hence Penney’s confidence in the club’s future.
This victory also shatters the myth that the Crusaders cannot win without Richie Mo’unga - driver of seven straight titles from 2017 to 2023. Penney pointed to the potential of his young pivots, Reihana and the injured Taha Kemara, with James White in reserve.
The chipper coach dedicated the title to “some wonderful people that work feverishly for the group, then the 15 lads that are on the field, the subs that come on and the boys that don’t get to play. They are all an integral part of it.”
Among the wider group celebrating as wildly as the starters were another eight-time winner halfback Mitch Drummond, outside back Johnny McNicholl, who got the winner’s medal he missed in the 2014 final, and hooker Ioane Moananu, who would have been a starter in most other lineups.
Penney, insisting he was “a small cog in the wheel’’, was reluctant to divert attention from the team to his own future.
Asked if he would be back to defend the trophy, he said: “Not sure yet”. Nor would he be drawn on whether he would like to, or if he might consider going out on a high.
“If I answer that, you are going to get the answer,’’ he laughed. He then said: “You wouldn’t want to work anywhere else’’, adding “you wouldn’t want to work anywhere else”, but he would wait to see “what falls out of the review’’. A case surely of a Penney for his thoughts.
Mansbridge told The Press the Crusaders “are not actively recruiting for a coach” and would wait for the review. He had said after the semifinal win over the Blues that the Crusaders were “comfortable with what Rob’s achieved’’.
That should be doubly so now.