“We’ve still got some work to do, but hopefully we’ll get a Super Round away [in 2027] and that’s likely to be slightly earlier, not Anzac week, but maybe a little bit earlier,” Crusaders CEO Colin Mansbridge says.
Super Rugby Pacific CEO Jack Mesley and Crusaders CEO Colin Mansbridge before the first game of the Super Round. Photo / Photosport
Bringing the Super Round back to Christchurch is surely a no-brainer for SRP, given its incredible success and popularity this season. Then there’s the fact that the roof at One NZ Stadium guarantees conditions for running rugby – and the broadcast spectacle that the competition too often lacks.
The success of the new stadium off the paddock was far in excess of predictions. Initial calculations suggested a $6.5m injection of cash to the local economy but official figures calculated the actual spend at $13m.
The Crusaders then sold out every home game for the remainder of the season, a dream come true for Mansbridge.
“Probably better than a dream come true, better than all of our expectations, that’s for sure.”
Punters watch day two of the Super Round from the Ōtautahi corporate lounge balcony at One NZ Stadium in Christchurch on April 25, 2026. Photo / Alyse Wright
But it wasn’t all skyrockets and pony rides at the new home turf. The halftime fireworks during the final round-robin match against the Hurricanes left a thick cloud of smoke above the field reminiscent of the 2006 “fog final” at Lancaster Park between the same teams. It was a genuine face-palm moment.
As for the pony rides, the famous Crusaders horses were retired one week and reinstated the next in a PR disaster that may have benefited from the aforementioned smokescreen.
In pure rugby terms, the new stadium couldn’t have delivered more. Compelling rugby and a perfect home record – despite the most gruelling closing campaign of any side.
To make the finals (and host a game) after a sluggish start, the Crusaders had to beat the Blues, Chiefs and Hurricanes in consecutive weeks. Then the Blues again in the elimination finals. They managed to do just that before their campaign ended abruptly in Hamilton, beaten in the semi-final by a Chiefs side whose first-half performance was utterly breathtaking. Crusade over.
“Our plan is to win championships. Whenever we don’t win a championship, we’re naturally disappointed, there’s just no way around it,” Mansbridge says.
Will Jordan suffered an injury-plagued end to the 2026 Super Rugby season. Photo / Photosport
By the time the semi-final side were named, the Crusaders had 14 players out injured. Among them were Will Jordan, Scott Barrett, Tamaiti Williams, George Bell, Dallas McLeod and Cullen Grace. The front-row stocks in particular were strained.
“We had good runs in the competition, but we were a bit un-Crusader-like at certain times,” Mansbridge says.
“There’s some areas we probably could have done a little bit better and that’s what we’ll try and get right for next year.
“The Reds and the Force were two frustrating games where we should have and could have won those.”
Rob Penney and David Havili at the presentation of the key to the City of Christchurch at One NZ Stadium in Christchurch on April 24, 2026. Photo / Alyse Wright
Rob Penney
The 2026 campaign was head coach Rob Penney’s third and final. After a tumultuous 2024 season saw them miss the finals altogether, Penney was at the helm of a dramatic turnaround in 2025 – winning the franchise’s 13th title (they also claimed the Super Rugby Aotearoa titles in 2020 and 2021).
“He is a wise, wise old fox,” Mansbridge says with a genuine admiration for the head coach.
“I see some commentators talk about he was lucky to keep his job [after 2024] and he had to prove himself to the organisation, all of which are completely untrue.
The CEO does see fault in Penney – but not flaw.
“He will never take credit. I think he’s humble to a fault. You don’t necessarily see that externally. Sometimes you see the wooden guy who gets pissed off when there’s been a leak about change of coach. You see grumpy old Penz, but that’s not who we see day in and day out inside the organisation and it’s not what the players see.
“I’d almost say sometimes coaches need a bit of ego about them. ‘I made a difference here’. ‘I did this and this’, and that whenever you try and have that conversation with Penz, he runs under a rock.”
Leicester Fainga’anuku transitioned from midfielder to openside flanker midway through the season. Photo / Photosport
Penney – by his assistants’ appraisal, is incredibly trusting of his coaching team. In 2026, that bore fruit with the reinvention of Leicester Fainga’anuku, the All Blacks midfielder who became a starting loose forward.
“Everybody thought it was a bit of an ‘out there’ move. And I must admit when I saw him on the team sheet, little alarm bells in my head started screaming thinking, ‘oh my goodness, are they serious’?”
Attack coach James Marshall is understood to have been the architect of the move, but it was Penney who signed off on it.
“Penz has allowed those people to see something that the rest of us don’t see and that wasn’t a universally accepted decision, amongst the group, but he worked his way through that and credit to him.
“We’re all sitting there going, wow, that was a master stroke. We weren’t saying that on the day or the week of selection.”
Former All Blacks assistant coach Scott Hansen will lead the Crusaders in 2027.
Scott Hansen
The coaching team will have a new head coach in Scott Hansen next season but the remainder of that group is unchanged, providing a settled environment for Hansen to move into. The new coach was last at the franchise as an assistant under Scott Robertson before following him into the All Blacks.
That tenure ended early with both Hansen and Robertson shown the door at the beginning of the year following a scathing end-of-season review.
“One of the things that came through the All Blacks review which I know, again the way it’s reported externally about the environment and the whole place – it’s almost like, who’s the fall guy for that? There’s a little bit of ‘oh he’s the head coach so it must be his fault’, even though it’s Razor [Robertson],” Mansbridge says.
“When you go through all the player feedback about him [Hansen], everybody for whom he had responsibility, their feedback was exceptional, and many players continued to lean on him as a coach, after he left the All Blacks environment.”
Richie Mo’unga will return to the Crusaders for the 2027 season. Photo / Photosport
Hansen has history with the Crusaders and history with the returning Mo’unga. The pair are said to have a “great relationship” and were responsible for much of the blistering attack that brought the Crusaders’ year-on-year success.
“I can’t wait for it, in some respects. I don’t want to sort of gloss over this season too much because the semifinals are nothing to be sneezed at, but it’d be nice to be planning to win a championship again that’s for sure,” Mansbridge says with some excitement.
Hansen’s appointment was supposed to be kept under wraps until the Crusaders season had finished, but it was uncovered early by the Herald, causing some red faces at their Rugby Park headquarters.
“We were prepared a couple of weeks beforehand, but we didn’t [announce Hansen] because the coach was quite keen to sort of see the campaign through.
“So, it was unsurprising to me that the news was going to get out there, personally, and it probably looked worse externally than it was.”
The Crusaders season ended in defeat to the Chiefs in Hamilton. Photo / Alyse Wright
Penney was less than impressed and let that be known at an awkward press conference.
“He was, we jestfully describe, wooden, wasn’t he, when he fronted that presser? The irony is in those situations, sometimes you’re better off just to answer the questions, and then it’s less of a distraction.
“It probably wasn’t as bad as what we allowed it to be, or what we allowed ourselves to think it was,” Mansbridge says.
2027
The coming season carries enormous promise for Super Rugby’s most successful franchise. A new coach, a returning superstar and what’s widely regarded as the best home ground in Australasia.
The crowd at the Crusaders-Blues round-13 match. Photo / Photosport
It also has a fanatical fanbase in a sport where apathy is becoming a default setting for once devout followers.
“We’re already getting people asking us about memberships for next year, who missed out on tickets for the quarter-final and the last two home games [this year].
“There are people who would traditionally have just, [thought] ‘I know I can just walk up on the day’, so we’ve got sort of waiting list emerging now – we haven’t got a formal one. As we do a review we’ll sit down and figure out how we do this.
“But we think we’re going to end up with a membership product for next year. We won’t sell every single seat in membership, but we think that we’ll give members a first right to purchase additional seats and from what we can tell, we might be selling them out before the first game.”
The Crusaders will be aiming to recapture the symbol of Super Rugby Pacific supremacy in 2027. Photo / George Heard
Even without the silverware it’s become accustomed to, the franchise is proving to be worth its weight in gold.
Mike Thorpe is a senior multimedia journalist for the Herald, based in Christchurch. He has been a broadcast journalist across television and radio for 20 years and joined the Herald in August 2024.