0
Wayne Smith | March 13, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE mathematical concept of zero might have been around for just over a thousand years but it is safe to say both the Crusaders and the Western Force players are struggling to get their heads around it.
The Force players at least have had two years to mull it over, today returning to the AMI Stadium in Christchurch where they were held to zero for the only time in their history by the Crusaders in 2007.
The 53-0 thrashing they endured that April day was notable not only for their lowest score ever but because it also set the record, that stood for all of one week until the Chiefs put 64 on them in the very next match - for the most points they ever conceded.
But it is safe to say the Crusaders are even more confounded by the idea of playing rugby for 80 minutes for zero return. Until they ventured down to Carisbrook to take on the Highlanders last weekend, the heavy hitters of Super rugby had got off the mark in every one of their 171 matches.
Then, suddenly, a duck, the most unexpected zero since "that" one at The Oval in 1948, the one that forever stranded The Don on 99.94.
Tough as the Crusaders have been doing it this season without Robbie Deans and Dan Carter, it still is inconceivable that they could restrict the Highlanders to two Daniel Bowden penalty goals and yet still lose by six points.
Having scarcely absorbed that indignity, the Crusaders now find themselves confronting another. One that, if anything, would be even more painful.
They have never in their proud and unmatched Super rugby history lost four matches in succession but that is what awaits them at AMI Stadium tonight if they prove no match for the Force.
Some measure of how well last weekend's catastrophe played out in Christchurch can be gleaned from the fact that coach Todd Blackadder has retained not a single member of the Crusaders backline used against the Highlanders in the same jersey, introducing three new faces and generally reshuffling his entire back division.
It may be, as another Blackadder might have put it, that the Crusaders' coach has a plan "so cunning you can brush your teeth with it".
Or, conversely, he might simply have come to his senses and reinstated Stephen Brett and Leon MacDonald in the two positions where they can do most good, five-eighth and fullback.
Certainly the desperation levels will be high in both camps, with the Force also coming off a last-start defeat, a bumbling shambles against the Chiefs in which it missed 14 tackles and conceded three soft tries in the first half alone.
While Force openside flanker David Pocock no doubt is frustrated that injury to Richie McCaw has cost him the chance to go head-to-head with the best ball-scavenger in the game, the absence of the All Black captain is a huge boost to the Perth side.
Now, in a match in which inspiration might be in short supply, the Force might well fall back on a slightly tweaked version of that old jingoistic line British soldiers used to recite about the Gatling gun: "Whatever happens, we have got Matt Giteau and they have not".
Giteau, his game sharpened by a session in Queenstown under his long-time kicking coach Ben Perkins, is by far the most potent attacking weapon in the arsenal of either side. If the Force is able to get on the front foot in the forward exchanges, and it has brought in David Pusey and Richard Stanford precisely to give it more muscle for that battle, Giteau should prove the difference.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015656,00.html