48 hours: Crusaders make others look like lemons

It's about this time in the Super 14 that supporters of the minnows, in backwaters like Auckland and Pretoria, start doing their sums.

It goes thus. You turn the telly off, forget that you've just watched the Crusaders squeeze another lemon team so hard that the pips have fired holes in the roof, and start banging in the sort of calculations to make a reserved Reserve Bank governor shriek with delight.

Out the other end comes the startling news that the Blues or the Bulls can actually make the semifinals, although it could be easier to conveniently bypass the debate about whether, having got there, these teams could realistically envisage winning a playoff game at Canberra or Jade Stadium.

You could just about hear the Blues supporters taking stock and finding the indicators pointing the right way after a patchy win over the inappropriately named Force on Friday night.

Any Blues delusions grander than they ought to be should have been banished less than 24 hours later however, when the Crusaders showed how a really well-drilled rugby side goes about its business as the champions dismantled another hapless South African outfit.

At least those championing the Blues have been handed an interesting diversion: Rua Tipoki's 16-week suspension may, to some, be on the harsh side. But then, given that there are only four matches left (it's pointless factoring in a semifinal), then even a much lighter sentence would have sidelined him from the remaining campaign.

Oh, and there is that other interesting diversion - North Harbour's coach Allan Pollock's description of Tipoki as a "tortured genius". The likeable Pollock can be effusive to the point of effluent - for tortured and genius read ill-disciplined and mildly talented.

The case of Tipoki says much about the Blues and their bumbling history. Remember, first, that David Nucifora didn't actually want the North Harbour captain in his initial 24, with the national union forcing Tipoki's selection because - for a mysterious reason - he had to stay in the north.

Tipoki then emerged as the Blues' backline rock, the gunslinger who becomes the sheriff in the town that didn't want him.

Now he's been turned into tumbleweed, the Blues will endure another reshaped backline, the price of the poor Tipoki discipline, which may have been why Nucifora was reticent about him in the first place.

The Super 14, and rugby itself, looks so different when you flick over to the Crusaders.

The growing emergence of centre Casey Laulala as a devastating runner and ball player was the highlight of the Crusaders' victory over the Cheetahs and should strike fear into those opponents who believe that Robbie Deans' side might suffer through too much rock and not enough dynamite.

Yet for all of Laulala's skill, the man who really caught my eye was good old Reuben Thorne.

Thorne ploughs away week after week, helping prepare the ground for the scoring bursts which almost inevitably follow. Dependable by any other rugby name is Thorne, and he stands for everything that works in Dean's magnificent outfit and also for everything that the Blues are not.

Given the chance for a glory run up the sideline during the humbling of the Cheetahs, Thorne did not even have to think better of it. His instincts took over, and he rumbled back in-field, where a bevy of teammates produced another of their carefully constructed huddles which ensure that the likes of Laulala get the proper chance to out-manoeuvre defences.

As Thorne diligently went about his work, I wondered if a man of his ilk would ever have seen the light of day in the north, where wild hair and wild ways are all the rage.

Thorne has never appeared tortured, although his oration is a verbal thumbscrew. And it would take an exceptionally long queue for him to make the grade as a rugby genius. But his vital work at the core of the Crusaders has not come about by accident, through a draft dodging exercise.

Even when Thorne had the chance to leg it for the cash, he stayed. Thorne pumps blood around the heart of the operation for the simple reason - but one which often escapes our Blues friends - that his Super 14 coach and provincial union carefully planned it that way.