Stu Loe was no Flash Harry. Rugged farmer; tough, uncompromising front-rower. A classic country rugby man.
And in the halls of Crusaders’ Rugby Park headquarters, Christchurch, on the wall, there he is, front and foremost: Crusader #01. The original. Not a playboy outside back with slick footwork and slicker hair, but Stu Loe. Prop. Man of few words, stranger to hyperbole and bulls***.
But even though Loe retired from rugby last century, and played his last game for the Crusaders 25 years ago – a victorious final at Eden Park that sparked the embers of a sporting dynasty and one of the greatest records in global pro sports – he still carries his old team with him everywhere he goes.
Tucked inside his beaten brown leather wallet is The Brotherhood. Red-and-black core values that Loe helped develop when the Crusaders were struggling, on the pitch, and off it, scrabbling to discover just who they were and what they stood for. He still carries with him everywhere he goes.
“It’s always been in there. I never took it out,” the 57-year-old says.
“You would turn up to games with your boots, your mouthguard, and your card. It was just part of it.”
His thick, calloused fingers skim the printed words that include: attitude, honesty, pride, ruthless, relentless, enjoyment, along with some old Japanese wisdom, and, inside, some things that “just need to stay secret”.
But that little piece of card, faded and dog-eared, was the foundation on which the Crusaders empire was built. A code of ethics that many others in the brotherhood can rattle off verbatim, and which can reduce some – huge, lumbering men, chockful of brawn and mana – to tears.
And it all started 25 years ago, when the Crusaders could hardly win a game.
The Brotherhood, sometimes referred to as ‘The Honesty Card’, was the brainchild of up-and-coming coach, and former Canterbury All Blacks first five-eighth Wayne Smith.
Smith landed his first major coaching gig at the Canterbury Crusaders (since renamed Crusaders) in 1997. The Lancaster Park-based franchise had struggled badly in the inaugural season of the then Super 12 rugby competition – the dawn of professionalism – finishing dead last, registering just two wins.
When Smith took the reins, he appointed upcoming rangy loose forward Todd Blackadder as the new captain, replacing the old war horse, All Blacks stalwart – and Stu Loe’s cousin – Richard Loe.
And with sidekick coach Peter Sloane, and Canterbury NPC coach and red-and-black legend Robbie Deans enlisted as team manager, Smith wanted to shake things up.
Smith and Deans, who had played together in Alex ‘Grizz’ Wyllie’s Ranfurly Shield-winning teams of the 80s, thought the players should be united in their goals to be successful and bring together fans from not just across the city of Christchurch, but also the wider Canterbury region, West Coast, Nelson and Marlborough who also made up the Crusaders franchise catchment area.
Inspiration came from different places. One of Smith’s mates was Gilbert Enoka, a pioneering mental skills coach who would forge an international name with the All Blacks, Silver Ferns, Black Caps and other codes. Smith, who is now known as ‘The Professor’ for his brilliant, studious, analytical take on the game, got the team to watch a scene from the 1989 film Henry V, directed by Kenneth Branagh.
Based on William Shakespeare’s play of the same name, a speech from the historical Battle of Agincourt where King Henry addresses his vastly outnumbered troops struck a chord for Smith.
After the video clip was played to the team, there was silence before the effervescent playmaker Andrew Mehrtens asked if they could watch it again.
Loe today finds it difficult to pinpoint just what resonated for them but believes its impact was somehow profound.
“At the time, it was just really relevant,” he says.
“They [Smith, Deans, Sloane] were ahead of their time in the mental skills approach to the game.”
They spent the next week dissecting what they were all about, devising an agreed vision and set of values.
With the Crusaders franchise just two years old, they had no history and little identity.
For Smith, it was crucial to find out “what a Crusader man should be”, perhaps even more important than coaching.
“We targeted almost a spiritual kinship as our way forward,” Smith, the 66-year-old coaching guru told the Herald this week.
The players and backroom staff all wrote down what they reckoned it was all about. What they stood for, where they were going, and what would get them there. The thoughts were recorded and distilled to what was eventually ‘the honesty card’. Everyone got a copy and had to remember every line.
Smith says they were vision-driven and values based.
“We put a huge emphasis on honesty, on living the behaviours we came up with and on keeping each other true to what we were about,” he says.
“Because the team was empowered and set their own challenges – with a bit of guidance from coaches! – there was plenty of social capital amongst the players; sharing of backgrounds, dreams and aspirations.”
Smith wanted the players to become true leaders. Some of them have gone on to become top coaches including All Blacks incumbent Scott Robertson, Todd Blackadder, Leon MacDonald, Daryl Gibson, Mark Hammett, Matt Sexton and Dave Hewett.
But in 1997, when the honesty card was introduced, the Crusaders finished a semi-respectable sixth – a far cry from the wooden spoon the year before – while the Auckland Blues romped to a second successive title.
They had found something though.
Auckland was the model. By the time professionalism came to rugby union in 1995, they had been rampant for years. Led by All Blacks legends Sean Fitzpatrick and the Brooke brothers, they owned the Ranfurly Shield from 1985 to 1993 and had built a culture of accountability, along with an enviable depth and competition for places.
The Crusaders’ third season started ominously, losing three of their first four games, including a humiliating loss to the Queensland Reds at Ballymore.
They started leaning into coach Smith’s secret catch cry for the season of ‘Kaizen!’ – a Japanese term meaning change for the better or continuous improvement.
An “honesty session” at one early training resulted in the team – which had already lost gun halfback Justin Marshall to a season-ending Achilles injury – rallying together and vowing to treat every game as their last in the jersey.
They were early adopters of video analysis. After games, they would dissect why players missed defensive assignments or made glaring errors. It wasn’t about piling on criticism but rather working out how to avoid future repeats.
“That all helped build trust in each other, especially in defence,” says Loe who played 26 times for the Crusaders between 1996 and 1998.
“Words are cheap and actions speak louder than words. We could’ve said lots of things but if you didn’t back them up it didn’t mean anything.”
Aaron ‘Oggy’ Flynn, the nuggety 90s halfback, stepped in for the hobbled Marshall and remembers the honesty card well.
“It was the whole start of things,” says Flynn, red-and-black as they come. He ruefully says he lost his card a few years after he retired. “But guys like Stuey [Loe], Toddy, and Marshy and all that, they still all have theirs.”
They went on a run. There were tough, gritty wins, blowouts, and a legendary away triumph against the Coastal Sharks in Durban where they watched the Henry V battle speech again.
The ‘Saders finished the season on a nine-match win streak, culminating in a dramatic final victory over the mighty Auckland Blues at the national fortress, Eden Park.
It sparked a hat-trick run of titles – and a staggering total of 11 over the last 25 years – that has seen the Crusaders become the most successful team in the Super Rugby competition’s history.
On Saturday, they are vying for an unmatched 12th championship.
But it all goes back to those early days and the start of the brotherhood.
Scott Robertson was a star openside in those late-90s teams and has never forgotten the honesty card and its importance. He famously fashions original themes and goals for every new season, always remembering their origins and those who came before them, guys like Stu Loe. In 2017, during his first season at the helm, Robertson’s theme was ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, based around legendary boxer Muhammad Ali’s famous 1974 fight with George Foreman in Zaire. Another year was ‘Purple Reign’, taking cross-code, cross-Ditch inspiration from the highly-successful Melbourne Storm NRL team.
“We’ve all been coached by lots of different coaches, and you pick out the things that work for you or motivate you and when you get the chance you try and implement them on the next group of players and Scotty Robertson has kept evolving,” Loe says.
“I’m not sure just how many themes he’s come up with over the years but whatever he does it seems to be working. But it’s all about trust and belief and buying into what you’re trying to achieve.”
The 1998 final was Loe’s last appearance for the Crusaders, going on to play one year for the Wellington Hurricanes and, as a Canterbury loan player, over the Southern Alps to help little West Coast qualify top in the NPC third division.
When he gave up, he never envisioned the Crusaders’ machine becoming the juggernaut of today.
“In the early days, there was no real acknowledgement of where this was heading. We didn’t know just how special it was going to become. But as the results obviously started rolling in, it did, it really became quite special.”
The opening of the new towering Deans Stand at Christchurch’s AMI Stadium shortly before the Canterbury earthquakes put the old Lancaster Park out of commission was a turning point in remembering where all the success originated from.
At an official function, ex-players were presented with their franchise number and a piece of rock with a sword thrust into it.
Loe, who played loosehead prop in the franchise’s first game against the Waikato Chiefs on March 3, 1996, was memorialised as Crusader #01.
For the North Canterbury farmer who drove 200km round trips to team trainings in the old amateur days, turning up dusty from a long day’s toil, who battled Steve McDowall, Graham Dowd, Olo Brown, and Craig Dowd, who would never express much outward pride, it still clearly means a great deal.
“I guess someone had to be.”
Kurt Bayer is a South Island correspondent based in Christchurch. He is a senior journalist who joined the Herald in 2011.