Well done Tahs. Great result for the competition.
Crusaders were awful and i'd like to see the Crusaders record under Razor when Mo'unga doesn't play - I can recall at least 4 losses off the top of my head.
The Crusaders weren't awful at all. This is just wishful thinking! Had they been awful it would have been a blowout. The Tahs were hard, accurate and dominant in tackles - all the hallmarks of the Crusaders over the years.
And Mo'unga wasn't the difference either, the Crusader 10 made a few mistakes here and there but not bad ones, I thought he went reasonably well for a newbie. In a game where there was only three points separating the teams and the match could have gone either way, just a couple of linebreaks were the only difference and that came down to a few missed tackles.
Mahe Vailanu didn't win MOM but he had a monster game, particularly in making metres after the tackle and putting the Crusaders on the back foot. Right now he's putting huge pressure on for Porecki's spot and he has jumped over Horton with just one game.
IMO none of the other top teams would have enjoyed playing against the Tahs in that game. Just how fired up they all were at the end of the game is a measure of how hard they played and how much it meant to them. The joy they showed at the final whistle was reminiscent of the 2014 final; they were pumped.
The job for the Tahs now is to repeat the effort, to make that the week-in/week-out standard. Its basically a young team with a few old heads, so you expect that there will be inconsistent performances. But if they can raise the standard of play to that level then nothing is beyond them. In 2014, at about the halfway point, the Tahs were going W/L/W/L and then it clicked and they won everything. That's what they need to do now, make that performance the new normal.
