KEY POINTS:
SUPER 14
Crusaders 33
Hurricanes 22
New Zealanders across the globe should be waking up this morning in a cold sweat that Robbie Deans will cross enemy lines next week.
No one knows how to plan a campaign better than Deans, as evidenced last night when the
Crusaders stuck their almighty mitt round the throat of the Hurricanes and proceeded to squeeze the life out of them.
Relentless doesn't really get to the nub of it. Where last week they were uncertain, standing off contact and holding something back, last night they were charged to the eyeballs.
The intensity was remarkable. The discipline exemplary and what the 18,000 who turned up saw was a classic demonstration of how to play finals football.
The players have to be given their dues for finding it in themselves to deliver when they had to; for shifting up a gear when the pressure was on and the expectation high.
The forwards wouldn't have been considered any more dangerous if they had been allowed to carry flick-knives and if anyone thought the fuss
about Dan Carter maybe heading overseas was overdone, their argument was left full of holes by the final whistle.
No side has ever won this competition without a world-class first five and Carter left no one in any doubt he is precisely that. He passed with a laconic ease and saw things so early that defenders didn't stand a chance.
He didn't miss a kick either and at this level, when games are won and lost on inches, a faultless display in front of goal has infinite value.
But the really clever part of their performance was the tactical brilliance. Deans is a knowledge sponge. A coach who observes in minute detail, storing things away like a squirrel so there is always something up his sleeve for the big occasion.
Supposedly it is madness to kick to the Hurricanes who have a backline that loves the spontaneous challenge of the counterattack. Except it didn't look like madness last night when Carter and Leon MacDonald kept pumping the ball high up the middle.
With Rodney So'oialo in the stands, the Hurricanes didn't have anyone who wanted to take responsibility for that vague area behind the forwards and just in front of the backs.
It became easy pickings for the Crusaders, either reclaiming the ball in the air, wrapping up the catcher and turning the ball over or hacking through the loose ball.
And once they had the Hurricanes' defence scrambling, the Crusaders kept their width and mixed it up with some powerful pick and drive.
The Hurricanes gamely resisted for most of the first half, tackling their heavy little hearts out. They even, amazingly given how bereft they were of territory and possession, led 8-6 with the break in sight.
But that was always a false portrayal of where the game was poised and where it was heading.
The defensive pummelling was always going to take its toll. Professional teams just can't tackle that much for that long and expect to still be in business in the final quarter.
So really, it was always a case of when, not if, the Crusaders were going to convert their pressure into points.
When MacDonald scampered under the sticks three minutes before halftime, there was a feeling then that they had wedged open the door and would slowly pile on the points.
It was a feeling that was built on the law of probability - as in it had to be improbable the Crusaders wouldn't tidy their execution and find the clinical finishing that had been missing in the first 40 minutes.
Confirmation the gut-feel was right came 10 minutes after the break, when MacDonald hammered on to a short pass to make the final few yards to the chalk and then Kieran Read powered over from similar range to make it 30-6 with 15 minutes remaining.
That final score left the Hurricanes shell-shocked. They had given everything, defended with courage and passion and had thrown the ball around on the few occasions they had it.
But their body language suggested they knew they had effectively been mugged by a side that knows its way around the business end.
The only sadness was the suspected broken arm suffered by Corey Flynn early in the first half.
Crusaders 33 (L. MacDonald (2), K. Read tries; D.Carter 4 pens, 3 cons) Hurricanes 22 (Z. Guildford, J. Thrush, N. Tialata tries; P. Weepu pen; J. Gopperth, J Collins cons).
