Page 104 of Just Come Over
So all that wasn’t bad. When he was in the glassed-in coach’s box high above Eden Park about ten hours later, though, and the game clock had ticked down to seventy-six minutes? Things were a little more tense.
The score was thirteen to ten, and the Crusaders had the thirteen. A defensive battle, but his defense had mostly held. On attack, they hadn’t gone quite so well.
Just now, though, he was sitting rigid, his pen forgotten in his hand, while they held again. The Crusaders were inside ten meters, their forwards smashing into the line time after time, and being met and driven back, over and over again. A surprise cutout pass, then, a long one, to one of the backs on the wing, and Finn was leaning forward beside Rhys, the tension all but quivering in him.
The wing took four steps toward the inside, his halfback running at his shoulder, pitched the dummy pass toward the tramlines at the edge of the field, making Kevin McNicholl move that way, then passed it back inside to a lock. To Kane Armstrong, all six foot eight of him, with a wingspan like an albatross, four meters from the line.
Tom Koru-Mansworth hadn’t been fooled by that dummy pass, not this time. The second the ball was in the air to Kane, he’d started moving, and Kane hadn’t pulled it in yet when Tom hit him hard.
Six foot six, fifteen Kg’s of new muscle on him, and still growing. He smashed Kane straight in the chest, and you could practically hear the impact as he sent Kane backward. And released him, exactly like he should have done, before plunging back into the battle. Marko Sendoa was at the breakdown in a heartbeat, getting himself over the ball as the Crusaders did the same on the other side.
Finn had his hands on the table in front of him. Rhys didn’t. He was just watching. Marko’s feet were planted, supporting his body weight, and he was still wrestling for that ball as Hugh barreled in behind him and Kors did the same on the other side.
Marko pulled the ball out. Three meters from the line, but passed back hard to Nico, the fullback, in the time it took to blink, and it was off Nico’s boot and sailing, not toward the touchline, where the Crusaders would get their chance again in a lineout, but in a short box kick, high into the air, where the Blues could compete for it.
No risk, no reward.Seventy-eight minutes on the clock, two minutes to go, and Nico was chasing his own kick, looking up, then leaping more than a meter into the air at the same time the Crusaders’ No. 10 went for the ball.
A clash of bodies, and Nico went down hard onto the turf and stayed down as a Crusaders forward collected the spilled ball and Nico got to his feet, shook his head, worked his shoulder, and trotted back into position.
Seventy-nine minutes and thirty seconds, and the Crusaders were the ones not giving up the ball.
Twenty seconds.
Ten seconds.
The hooter sounded, a Crusaders player kicked the ball into touch, and the referee blew his whistle.
Game over.
Heading into the sheds after the game as the players sat on their benches, unwound tape from around wrists and thighs, and didn’t meet each other’s eyes. Nobody was going for the beer, which was good. Rhys shook hands, each in turn, spending a moment extra with Nico. “You collected a stinger there,” he said, and Nico said, “Yeh. No worries.”
Tomorrow was soon enough. Rhys moved down to Kors. The kid was taking off his boots, all of him mud- and grass-stained, his cheekbone already swelling red.
“That was switched on,” Rhys said, clasping his hand. “And then it was switched higher. Well done.”
Kors nodded, but he didn’t look happy. Which was good, too. You weren’t meant to look happy, or feel that way, after a loss.
A half hour later, he was saying the same thing from the coach’s table, sitting beside Finn at the postgame press conference.
“What’s the mood in the sheds?” a journo asked.
“What do you think?” Rhys asked. “They’re gutted.”
“A good effort, surely,” the man persisted. “Especially from your bench.”
“We made good progress on some things,” Rhys said. “Our defense, for one, which is mainly down to Finn, and the leadership on the field. But if you don’t hate to lose, you don’t belong here.”
“It was risky, surely, going for the box kick at the end,” another man said. “Should you have kicked into touch instead and tried to steal the lineout, or held onto the ball, with that little time on the clock?”
“If it had come off,” Rhys said, “you’d be telling me we were brilliant. I’m feeling pretty proud of the stand we made, down there at the end, and the turnover, too. Full credit to the Crusaders, though. They played a good game tonight.”
“How would you rate your own performance?” somebody else had to ask. “Three wins and two losses put you fourth on the table, if the Hurricanes win against the Brumbies tomorrow as expected. Are you thinking about your job?”
Cheers, mate,Rhys didn’t say.I hadn’t noticed.“The season’s got a ways to go yet,” he said. “I’m not in charge of rating my performance, and I’ll worry about my job when somebody gives me reason to. We’ll take our learnings from this and get better from it. You can’t change the past. All you can do is move ahead into the future.”
They should put him on a fortune cookie. It was what he’d told Zora. All he had was rugby wisdom.
Part of that hadn’t been true, though. Hewasin charge of rating his performance and, if it wasn’t up to scratch, seeing what he needed to do to improve it. Which meant he had a couple things he needed to do tomorrow. Things he should have done weeks ago.
