{"id":325233,"date":"2026-03-12T03:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T03:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/325233\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T03:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T03:18:07","slug":"crusaders-training-fight-fallout-rob-penneys-call-and-media-ban-spark-concern-gregor-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/325233\/","title":{"rendered":"Crusaders training fight fallout: Rob Penney\u2019s call and media ban spark concern \u2013 Gregor Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Training-ground bust-ups are not uncommon<\/a>, but rugby teams and media tend to disagree on their newsworthiness and public interest.<\/p>\n

\"AA training-ground bust-up has come as the Crusaders have started the competition with one win from four matches. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n

The media, somewhat unsurprisingly, considers teammates fighting teammates<\/a> as something fans of the club in question would like to know about, and while there is an acceptance the training ground is not a typical workplace, it\u2019s not so different as to classify physical dust-ups between colleagues as \u201cnothing to see here\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rugby teams, however, typically try to sell these incidents as a natural part of the high-performance environment \u2013 an understandable consequence when training is intense and sessions have an overtly physical theme.<\/p>\n

Crusaders coach Rob Penney went even further down that road when he said: \u201cIt was a really lovely sight to see, actually.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a reflection of how much it means. The boys aren\u2019t happy with the performances and the outcomes.<\/p>\n

\"RobRob Penney: “It is a reflection of how much it means.” Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n

\u201cVery proud young men are going to come up against each other and create a bit of sandpaper from time to time.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s not a thing that is going to affect negatively. We are all over it, the boys are fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other than Penney\u2019s choice of the word \u201clovely\u201d, which felt like a grossly ill-considered glorification of events, everything was playing out as it should, with both parties fulfilling their prescribed roles and that should have been things put to bed.<\/p>\n

But somewhere along the line, the Crusaders decided the matter was not finished at all and have effectively banned media from having any visual access to future training sessions.<\/p>\n

And here lies the red flag in this whole sorry affair: if seeing two teammates get stuck into each other Western saloon-style was \u201clovely\u201d, why have the Crusaders reacted the way they have to the incident being reported?<\/p>\n

The answer, looking in from the outside, appears to be because of a team who are not living up to the long-held values that have made them the most successful club in Super Rugby history.<\/p>\n

From the coach calling a training ground fight \u201clovely\u201d to the media being told they are no longer allowed to do what they have done for an age and observe the last minutes of training to take pictures and capture footage, is an obvious sign of disconnection, confusion and angst.<\/p>\n

This is hardly the stuff of wild supposition as the team\u2019s performances have said the same thing \u2013 particularly a record loss to the Brumbies in round two.<\/p>\n

In Penney\u2019s first season in charge the Crusaders won four games<\/a> and in the next they won the title<\/a>. With his third season having started in the fashion it has, it\u2019s no easy thing determining whether 2024 or 2025 was the anomaly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If 2026 is going to shift to a better trajectory, it will likely be because of the Herculean efforts of Havili, who has morphed into one of the country\u2019s best leaders and the sort of player the All Blacks would be frankly mad to not have in their environment this year.<\/p>\n

Havili is maybe not a starter for the men in black, but he comes with serious utility value, and the massively underrated quality of being a calm decision-maker, towering presence and guiding light.<\/p>\n

The All Blacks have so few of those in general and almost none in their backline, and Havili, who was strangely overlooked last year after captaining the Crusaders to the title, is the sort of character who will address standards in others he doesn\u2019t think are right and hold his peer group accountable.<\/p>\n

It was Havili who was pictured breaking up the training scuffle and it is Havili who no doubt sat the two protagonists down and gave them chapter and verse about how it\u2019s not the Crusaders\u2019 way to have a bit of a scrap like that, and especially not in front of the media.<\/p>\n

This is a guy who could be an enormous asset for the All Blacks in South Africa<\/a>. He is someone who could lead the midweek team, be a standard bearer at training and the sort of experienced figure who could slip into the top team \u2013 at second five-eighths or fullback \u2013 at short notice and deliver a performance.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a terrible start to the season for the Crusaders<\/a>, but the level-headedness and doggedness of Havili may yet find a way to piece the team together, win a few more games and stop teammates from scrapping with one another.<\/p>\n

Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand\u2019s most respected rugby writers and columnists.<\/a> He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Training-ground bust-ups are not uncommon, but rugby teams and media tend to disagree on their newsworthiness and public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[95,1060,3043,2516,56380,3278,48338,15124,23469,1073,111,139,69,17357,167405,77461,9643,213,8812],"class_list":["post-325233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-and","tag-ban","tag-call","tag-concern","tag-crusaders","tag-facts","tag-fallout","tag-fight","tag-gregor","tag-media","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paul","tag-penneys","tag-rob","tag-spark","tag-sports","tag-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325233","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=325233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}