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Enough to make grown men weep: Nine games, seven losses, six by five points or less, three by clock-in-the-red scores

By Liam Heagney
Benetton Treviso players (left) are enduring some agonising last-gasp losses this season (Photo by Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)

It’s a good job Benetton boss Kieran Crowley is a glass-half-full sort of guy. Nine matches, seven defeats, six losses by five points or less, three due to last-gasp, clock-in-the-red scores. That would leave most coaches pulling their hair out in despair.

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The pattern has been tough for the Italian club boss. Just last May he received the Guinness PRO14’s coach of the year award at a gala event in Dublin. 

Now the 58-year-old is tasked with a very different challenge, repeatedly picking his players up off the canvas after some devastatingly late league and cup hits. 

For instance, it was an 80th minute Dan Jones penalty that gave Scarlets their 18-16 PRO14 win on November 9. Two weeks later, the Italians relinquished a 25-8 Heineken Champions Cup lead over Gallagher Premiership pace-setters Northampton. They were beaten 35-32 with an 80th minute Dan Biggar penalty. 

Then came their latest end-game calamity, their 28-17 lead after an hour ultimately getting scrubbed out last Saturday by Jason Harries’ last-second converted try. That agonisingly made it 31-28 to Cardiff on the whistle in the PRO14.  

(Continue reading below…)

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Enough to make grown men weep? Yes, but that negative is ironically also a positive given where the Treviso-based club were only a few years ago, happy just to make up the numbers rather than produce any semblance of a performance to take pride in. 

“I looked at the changing room after the Northampton game and then I put ourselves in that same position three years ago,” said Crowley to RugbyPass ahead of this weekend’s return to European action, an away Saturday at Top 14 leaders Lyon. 

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“I would have looked at the changing room and they would have had smiles on their faces, but they are now just gutted and that is the (positive) thing. We hurt big time and that result really stung for us. 

“It’s about letting it sting because it needs to. But then there was also a hell of a lot of good stuff in there, so you have got to balance it and that is where we have been with it. Hopefully, when we get in those sort of situations or those big moments in games we manage them better. 

“What we are lacking at the moment is consistency. I know consistency is an overused thing but we are lacking consistency in key moments. Like, for example, if I take the Northampton game, we were well in control of it.

“We then had three or four incidents in the period from 30 minutes to 60 minutes which cost us big time because players just went slightly out of the system or slightly didn’t understand the time of the game or things like that. 

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“People come back and say, ‘oh you gave away a penalty in the last minute to lose’ but we should never have been in that position. It’s the consistency in big moments,” he explained, adding how Benetton’s run to last season’s PRO14 quarter-finals, another fixture they lost late on when they should have won at Munster, has raised the premium on producing wins.    

“They [the crowd] expect it, we expect it. We are now starting to expect things but also with that expectation, you can’t just think it is going to happen. You have got to work hard at it and we have just got to keep doing the things that we are doing.

“When things don’t go right, and we have only had a couple of wins this year, you don’t chuck everything out, don’t chuck what did work for us. Maybe we are just not as clinical as we should be in this area at training or whatever. Those are the things we have got to do.”

Conscious of the need to set the tone at the start of a week, Crowley is becoming a dab hand at picking up the pieces and getting on with it with a smile. “The coaching philosophy is very much around accentuating the positives rather than concentrating on the negatives,” he said, reflecting on Benetton’s current ‘unlucky losers’ patch. 

“I very much think that the staff provide the energy, the staff have to come in each day and be up and they have to provide that for the team. You have little games, you have little meetings, you can’t have death by meeting, things like that. 

“We try and make those things fun or a lot more enjoyable and try to have only one or two points in those meetings or whatever, not a whole lot of things. I don’t know what might be different because I’m in any other environments at the moment. What we are doing might be exactly the same as other teams, but it’s just the way we do it.

“Players have to buy into it. You can’t go in and tell them how to act or how to do it. They have to come up with those sort of things, so they have to be invested in what they are doing and that is our big thing now.

“They are invested in the culture, they are invested in the way they play, they are invested in the way they train, they are invested in the standards and if you can get all those things right and then you get a couple of results on the field they get self-belief in it. So they believe in the investment that they are doing. It’s good.”

Having arrived in 2016, it was just last September when Crowley agreed to a contract extension that will keep him at the club until June 2022. In the meantime, the situation above him has changed, Conor O’Shea stepping aside as Italy boss and Franco Smith stepping in on an interim basis for the 2020 Six Nations. 

As a former coach of Canada, Crowley is well versed on what is needed at Test level but he is unsure what the Azzurri’s recent change at the top might mean for Benetton. “I don’t know. Franco comes in on January 1 and he is the interim head coach until the end of the Six Nations. I don’t know how that is going to work. They will do what they want to do.”

It was in Japan that New Zealand lost its grip on the trophy first won in 1987 when Crowley was part of the All Blacks set-up as a player. He likes it that their defeat to England was so heavily debated, suggesting it was a sign the sport remains in rude health.

“It’s still religion back there. The people who were there [involved in the loss] handled it well. You have got to do that because you have got to give credit to the team that beat you. England went great in that game and they deserved to win. 

“I know they [fans] will still moan about the result. If you lose it is a national disaster in New Zealand but that is what is great about it because everyone has got an opinion and everyone has got a say and if they didn’t have that you wouldn’t have the sport,” he said, adding that nothing really surprised him at the 2019 finals. 

“Not really. Teams played as you thought they were going to play. Just the performances of Japan went to another level around that side of things. There is still a place for the physicality of it, but if you can get that balance between how Japan play and how South Africa play it would be a great game.”

WATCH: RugbyPass Rugby Explorer takes a trek through the Italian rugby communities in Rome and Treviso   

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Jon 7 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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john 9 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.

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Adrian 11 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

Thanks Nick The loss of players to OS, injury and retirement is certainly not helping the Crusaders. Ditto the coach. IMO Penny is there to hold the fort and cop the flak until new players and a new coach come through,…and that's understood and accepted by Penny and the Crusaders hierarchy. I think though that what is happening with the Crusaders is an indicator of what is happening with the other NZ SRP teams…..and the other SRP teams for that matter. Not enough money. The money has come via the SR competition and it’s not there anymore. It's in France, Japan and England. Unless or until something is done to make SR more SELLABLE to the NZ/Australia Rugby market AND the world rugby market the $s to keep both the very best players and the next rung down won't be there. They will play away from NZ more and more. I think though that NZ will continue to produce the players and the coaches of sufficient strength for NZ to have the capacity to stay at the top. Whether they do stay at the top as an international team will depend upon whether the money flowing to SRP is somehow restored, or NZ teams play in the Japan comp, or NZ opts to pick from anywhere. As a follower of many sports I’d have to say that the organisation and promotion of Super Rugby has been for the last 20 years closest to the worst I’ve ever seen. This hasn't necessarily been caused by NZ, but it’s happened. Perhaps it can be fixed, perhaps not. The Crusaders are I think a symptom of this, not the cause

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