succumb 29-13 to their old rivals<\/a>.<\/p>\nMost worryingly, their clunky attack failed to make any real inroads on the Blues defence.<\/p>\n
After looking so potent against the Chiefs, the Crusaders lacked direction just a week later, fumbling passes, kicking aimlessly and repeatedly caught behind the advantage line.<\/p>\n
Such a drastic dip forces questions and the obvious answer – they were without their primary weapon, Will Jordan, with the All Black rested for the round four clash.<\/p>\n
Do the Crusaders rely on their sensational fullback too heavily? Coach Rob Penney concedes they might.<\/p>\n
“We talk about that a bit and that’s the last thing we want to,” he said. “He’s world class and he makes a massive impact for any team he’s in.<\/p>\n
“We need to take heat off Jordy. Will’s just an amazing talent, and we want to make sure he can come here and play with freedom, not feel as though he’s a critical piece.”<\/p>\n
Penney described it as an “ugly performance”.<\/p>\n
“Really disappointing,” he admitted. “We were messy, couldn’t get any rhythm.<\/p>\n
“Looked as though we were a bit flat, didn’t bring any intensity really. We’ve got some talented players and we were inexplicably error-ridden tonight.<\/p>\n
“There wouldn’t be too many that could put their hand up and say it wasn’t me.”<\/p>\n
Handling errors plagued them throughout.<\/p>\n
“You could see a lot of them were at times when there wasn’t a lot of defensive pressure on, so we can’t blame excess pressure. The boys are better than that.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard to put your finger on when good players are making errors.”<\/p>\n
They also had a Jamie Hannah try disallowed, due to an earlier high shot by Dom Gardiner.<\/p>\n
“They’re big momentum shifters. We’re disappointed that we work hard on keeping our shots down, our tackle height down.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t need to be in that position. Very frustrating, because it was a nice try and we’d fought our way back, so big turnaround.”<\/p>\n
After their stunning upset win over the Chiefs, the Crusaders have now lost three of their first four matches to begin their title defence.<\/p>\n
“It probably does feel as though we haven’t certainly made the progress we would’ve liked on the back of last week,” said Penney.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All Black Will Jordan was rested for the Crusaders’ clash against the Blues. Photo: Martin Hunter\/ActionPress World class…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-318276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Will](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4KBZFG7_p_00208933_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n