The Crusaders and Chiefs blend local talent with well-identified recruits to build long-term success.
Their strong identities and cultures rebrand recruits as local, fostering unity and purpose.
This cultural alignment drives their performance, especially in crucial moments, leading to consistent success.
It’s possibly coincidence – but probably not – that the Crusaders and Chiefs have operated with a similar formula that has seen them cleverly blend a core of locally developed players with a healthy smattering of well-identified recruits from around New Zealand.
This seems to be the rightblueprint to build long-term success in Super Rugby. Both clubs have a catchment of select local schools that run outstanding rugby programmes, and both have strong networks to scour the country to find the right players in positions that have been identified as weak.
The Chiefs and the Crusaders have both been active in developing talent from outside of their regions. Photo / Getty Images
The testament to the strength of this blueprint is not just that these two teams are in the Super Rugby final, but that they have done such a good job at rebranding recruited players as local men, wedded to the region as if they were born-and-bred locals.
The Crusaders and Chiefs know how to find the right players, indoctrinate them and turn them into hard believers – disciples to a cause.
As a literal branding exercise, no club knows better than the Crusaders how to put a stamp on an outsider and make them want to stay in Christchurch for life.
The list of Crusaders who grew up in regions better known for hating the team, but came to play for it and embody its spirit and essence is extensive: There’s Scott Barrett, Sam Whitelock, Kieran Read and, of course, Richie McCaw.
The Chiefs haven’t been bad at this immersion-conversion business either. Aaron Cruden, Brodie Retallick and Charlie Ngatai were not locally grown but came to symbolise the grit and determination at the core of the side.
On show on Saturday night will be Damian McKenzie, who has been carving up for Waikato and the Chiefs for so long now – a decade – that it’s almost forgotten that he is a South Islander, brought up in Southland and schooled in Christchurch.
Likewise, having gone the other way, is Noah Hotham, the electric young halfback who looks red and black to the core, but was in fact poached from Hamilton Boys’ High School.
The other three New Zealand sides are following similar blueprints but arguably the Crusaders – who have won seven of the past eight titles, and the Chiefs, who are in their third straight final – have been the best at the enigmatic art of identity and culture building.
It could even be called an esprit de corps, but whatever the terminology, the unity of a team and its desire to play for a clearly defined purpose, often regularly becomes the differentiating factor in the biggest games.
The tendency in modern rugby analysis is to focus mostly on strategic application and execution and see any contest as a straight battle between the vision of the respective coaching teams and the ability of their players to bring it to life.
There is, of course, a significant basis to think like this and the tactical masterplan and the natural intuition of the players to tweak it are core elements of understanding performance.
But usually, when competitions get down to the last four – or the last two – there is no obvious separation point between them in their foundation approaches.
Typically, big games are not swung by tactical mismatches or gulfs in their basic skill execution.
It’s the little moments that matter – and it’s always the case that what governs the outcome of these moments, when extreme precision is required, is the desire of the player.
That’s the underlying factor – the unseen force – that has swept the Crusaders to so many titles and has been driving the Chiefs all this year.
How else to explain the way the Crusaders defended their line for so long with so much passion and accuracy last week against the Blues without conceding the try that would have likely forced extra time?
It was a brilliant effort by the Blues, who held the ball for 40 phases, but it was arguably an even better defensive showing from the Crusaders. They had that desperation to make tackles and keep their rivals out.
In Hamilton, it was the same desire that led to McKenzie making an incredible try-saving tackle on Tom Banks when the Brumbies fullback was diving over the line.
McKenzie never gave up the chase and somehow got his hands under the ball in an impossible act of bravery and skill – and one that screamed of his resilience and sense of pride.
The Crusaders and Chiefs have all the technical bells and whistles, and a bit of star power here and there.
But it is their alignment and deep understanding of their culture and identity that has driven them both to yet another final.
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