Crusaders

Ewan McIntosh with us after five o'clock.

We'll chat some rugby as well with Scott Hansen, who is having his first season with the Crusaders as their head coach.

I believe it's his first head coaching experience in the professional game, so we'll talk to him about that, how the Crusaders are heading, and obviously they've named their squad amongst every other New Zealand Super Rugby side, so we'll talk to him about how he thinks they are faring towards next season.

The Pyramid between 4.30 and 5 as well, and Matty Gordon after 5.30 to discuss last night's netball test.

Nearly four minutes after three, Millsy and Guy on Sport Nation, thanks to the team at Kogan Mobile, get awesome prepaid plan bargains at Kogan Mobile.

concerns.

All right, who's the other team in the semi then? Can an Aussie team jump into the semis? Oh, I'll be surprised.

Okay, so the Highlanders or Crusaders get the fourth spot?

A lot of environments talk around growth and every day coming in to be better.

And I feel the Crusaders have got that in front of mind.

And that'll be something that we always continue to do.

And within our environment, we talk about protecting what matters.

So did that play a different part when it came to selecting this group and I guess keeping your eyes on NPC over the last two months?

Oh yeah, as a coaching staff we've done that together.

It's really important everyone's involved in that because all our coaches are going to be players so everyone's had a really good involvement and done some outstanding work in the background to get our facts and figures right around the players and for sure I might be the guy at the front heading it but all the work that we do together as a coaching group is massively important and we're really excited around the young men that we've given the opportunity to come into the Crusaders and contribute and some of the assistant coaches have made some great phone calls over the last day or so just to connecting with these players and to hear how excited they are around coming in.

It's a special moment for us at this time of the year.

Jimmy Taylor is on a national development contract with the Highlanders already and trains full-time anyway, like Mika was last year.

What I'm dumbfounded about is the Landers have a hooker and a Lucy from Waikato, but the Crusaders have a hooker and a Lucy from Southland.

You can protect six players and then it's auction.

So they couldn't protect them all.

They've done a good job.

Yoani Moananu, who's with the Crusaders when I was down there, great little young kid, went over to the Waratahs.

He's come back, and after a solid season for counties, he's signed down with the Highlanders.

Yeah, those two squads are probably ones that I thought would probably find it difficult to sign and build a nice established squad, but they've done that.

And obviously Cam Miller's shot up north, so Joshie Jacob will be down with the Highlanders in that 10 position.

So yeah, those are probably the two squads that stood out for me.

Crusaders, nice squad.

Building nicely.

They've done a good job.

Yoani Moananu, who's with the Crusaders when I was down there, great little young kid, went over to the Waratahs.

He's come back, and after a solid season for counties, he's signed down with the Highlanders.

Those two squads are probably ones that I thought would probably find it difficult to sign and build a nice established squad.

So, you know, Joshie Jacob will be down with the Highlanders in that team position.

So, yeah, those are probably the two squads that stood out for me.

Crusaders, nice squad.

Building nicely.

We'll get to you going on the end of your tour soon and whether that's been confirmed, but we haven't spoken about them.

Crusaders, what's your take? And there's probably four reasons because you can't stand them, but that's okay.

Crusaders, what are you expecting? Scotty Hanson takes over as coach.

Richie Moe comes back.

David Harvilli's not there.

He's a talisman.

And he's a great leader, but he won't be a part of this team.

Anything, expectations for the Crusaders?

that's where the you know you talk about champions doing extras doing all that dark that hard work and then you know when the other you might have the others puffing and carrying on but then you go I'm going to do extra again even more Do you know what I mean? I would always do a session.

If I had a session, I'd do, when I was playing for the Crusaders around a soccer field, I'd always do a Malcolm set of six after it.

Basically, I'm defying it.

I'm saying, I go, like you said, my mindset was, you know, it sounds gross, but I want to feel like peeing, pooing and spewing all at once.

It means so much to me.

Represent my state means so much to me and to play for Australia, right? Come to this country, love Australia.

When I went back, I went to the Crusaders and it was the best place for my footy and all that sort of stuff.

I went up to Japan and Jamie Joseph, who's the coach of the Highlanders, he had a connection with the club I was at and he said, come back.

You've got to think back.

When he moved into the seven role for the Crusaders, things changed in a big way.

Now, granted, their ball retention was better, but he was also getting the ball for them on quite a regular basis.

But what Leicester was able to do, I feel, was in part because of the work being done by the other members of the loose forwards, which were...

He strikes me as one of those guys who will just figure out a way to... to move up the level.

Chiefs, again, nothing major really sort of jumped out there.

Apart from Corey Kello coming up, and I guess that's because down at the Crusaders, which we'll talk about soon, Olly Mathis last year was on a wider training group contract, but this year he's on a full contract.

I guess they needed a spot there.