In the final round of the regular season, the Crusaders celebrated Sevu Reece’s century with a commanding 47-14 win under the roof at Te Kaha.<\/p>\n
Without their greatest strike weapon in Will Jordan and with Ethan Blackadder a late scratching, the Crusaders ran riot at their new fortress.<\/p>\n
The win leaves the side into third on the table, the Blues now needing a win in Hamilton to gain hometown advantage next weekend.<\/p>\n
Centurion Reece celebrated his milestone with the opening try, darting in from the base of the ruck to put his side on the board.<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes replied right away, Brad Shields muscling over after Cam Roigard sucked in defenders running from the ruck.<\/p>\n
Cue a Crusaders scoring spree.<\/p>\n
The hosts ran in three unanswered tries before the break, the best coming on the back of a breathtaking counter attack.<\/p>\n
Chay Fihaki would snatch it after a prolonged Hurricanes attack, the Crusaders firing it wide for David Havili to make a surging break upfield.<\/p>\n
He linked with Christian Lio-Willie who found a superb offload to Noah Hotham to cap off the full field cracker.<\/p>\n
Johnny McNicoll extended the advantage through controversial fashion, replays showing he may have lost control as he tried to grass it.<\/p>\n
Another blow before the break came as Lio-Willie powered over in the corner after Reece exploded through a hole and flicked it on for McNicoll to send his number eight away.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a-halftime-mishap-saw-the-one-nz-stadium-awash-with-smoke-WR4AP6XZ4BDMZPARZUHJY4A4MA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
A halftime mishap saw the One NZ Stadium awash with smoke. (Source: Crusaders)<\/p>\n
A halftime mishap saw the stadium awash with smoke.<\/p>\n
“Tonight we tried something different for our Men’s Mental Health Match, but the halftime pyrotechnics didn’t quite go to plan, leaving haze over the field longer than we’d hoped,” a post on the Crusaders’ social media explained.<\/p>\n
“Apologies for the disruption and thanks for your patience while it cleared. Every week in a new stadium brings a few lessons and we’ll keep learning!”<\/p>\n
After oranges, the match both opened up and fell apart.<\/p>\n
With the benches cleared early, there was plenty of enterprise, with little execution.<\/p>\n
“It’s a lolly scramble,” was the description from Sky commentator Justin Marshall.<\/p>\n
However, the sides managed to strung another three tries together, the first coming after 15 minutes of chaos, replacement hooker Manumaua Letiu<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes would get a consolation as Pouri Rakete Stones rumbles over form close range, only for the Crusaders to reply immediately through a McNicoll linebreak, linking with Kyle Preston.<\/p>\n
Reece would bookend his 100th with a brace, waltzing in as the Canes tried to run it from deep but had the ball ripped.<\/p>\n
Beware the defending champs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though they may meet again in 2026, the Crusaders have landed a significant psychological blow ahead of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[158,56380,49155,111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-451852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-christchurch-canterbury","tag-crusaders","tag-hurricanes","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451852","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=451852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}