Rob Penney searching for answers after back-to-back losses in Australia

With less than a week before they open their shiny new 25 thousand seat stadium in Christchurch, Crusaders head coach Rob Penney has been left slightly confused by his team’s recent losses in Australia.

The Crusaders have lost back-to-back games on their two-week Australia tour, with both the Reds and the Western Force beating the Christchurch-based franchise 31-26.

They currently sit sixth on the Super Rugby Pacific table after nine games, two points in front of the Waratahs heading into Super Round in Christchurch.

The Force then closed the gap just before halftime, bringing that momentum into the second half, where they managed to claw their way back into the contest, eventually taking the lead and securing the win in the 70th minute.

The Crusaders head coach wasn’t exactly sure why his team switched off in that middle period of the game, where the Force scored 19 straight points.

“That’s the $60,000 question, isn’t it? That’s where all the discussions are at the moment, so we’ll dig into that,” Penney said in Perth post-match.

“Certainly, it’s probably a little bit of mental relaxation, along with a bit of sharpness which follows, if you’re not mentally sharp, the whole time the sharpness of your physical approach just drops off.

“There’s probably a little bit of that and then once the Western Force got their tails up a little bit from the back end of the first half and the start of the second half, it can be challenging to recover.

“And there were some small moments in there where, the last try that we got that was pulled back, those tight games, those things sometimes can change the outcome of the game.”

When asked about the two-week block of games in Australia, where they lost both encounters by five points, Penney said that the error count just wasn’t good enough.

“Really disappointed, obviously coming all this way and getting a significant lead and just letting the foot off the throat, and just allowed a good Western Force side and they just keep going at us, and we just kept making errors and discipline issues,” Penney explained.

On how they dealt with Lomax’s threat, Penney praised the 26-year-old’s ability, but said they didn’t expose him as much as they could have, being his first proper game of Rugby union.

“Yeah, we enjoyed the challenge of it. Yeah, we know he’s a gifted athlete, a wonderful footballer, but he hasn’t had experience in Rugby and there was moments there that we could have probably exposed them a little bit.

“But, you know, we took that aerial catch and there’s things to his game that is pretty special.”