Mark down 2024 as one of the best ever. Beat the Crusaders twice in the normal season rounds. Has any Australian team done that before?
At the game the atmosphere was electric. Neither team played like they were in the bottom four. Two weeks ago the Crusaders beat the Chiefs convincingly and then had the bye to freshen up. Before the game I expected our scrum to crumble. At the game it looked close to break even, maybe a slight points victory Saders. Every time the Crusaders pulled away we managed to pull them back in range. Fair dinkum, I reckon we butchered at least five tries and yet still we were close. And then we pulled level at the end of normal time. OK I thought, the Crusaders will do what they normally do. But no, we chose correctly, kept the play at their end, kept the pressure on and then Harrison became the hero. Finally we had won a close one.
I thought Berry had a poor game. I counted three deliberate knock-downs and Berry had to be talked into carding the last and most obvious one. It looked to me like the Crusaders collapsed the maul that he ruled was held up. There were lots of other things let go that favoured the Crusaders. I'll re-watch the game tomorrow, sometimes at the ground its not easy to see everything.
The front row stood up. I expected a bloodbath and it wasn't. Swinton had a blinder apart from one time when he reacted to a late cleanout. We made some lovely breaks that came to nothing, we need to learn to finish. Perese never passes and opposition teams know it. So they just box him up and shut the movement down. I don't know who our best two centres are, but Walton is one of them. Harrison has to start for the rest of the season, he is a class above Edmed despite a couple of bad kicks tonight.
We are not out of this comp yet, though I doubt we can make the top four. But other teams will fear meeting us if we continue the passion and add some polish.