LONG READ How the Chiefs have become Super Rugby Pacific's ultimate finishers

‘The greatest rivalry’ can be hard to define. In New Zealand, the Crusaders have been top dog for so long their rivals have often looked like drifters, just passing through a town with permanent red and black bunting. Crusaders versus Blues should be big city versus the gateway to the country, but all too often Auckland has failed to live up to the billing. Crusaders versus Hurricanes represents the battle between the two major cities in New Zealand, one in the South Island, the other in the North.

But if the measure is the intensity and closeness of the contest, the truest rivalry in recent times is to be found in the duel between the Crusaders and the Chiefs. Over the past 50 games between the clubs, the Crusaders have won on 28 occasions, and the Chiefs on 22. The last major final between the pair was the Super Rugby Pacific 2023 showpiece, shaded by the Saders, 25-20.

The Chiefs have won three of the four matches since then, and last weekend in Christchurch it was a battle between the number one and two in the competition as a whole. You cannot ask for a better rivalry than that. Think Joe Frazier against Muhammad Ali at the ‘Thrilla in Manila’ in 1975, or Tom Watson versus Jack Nicklaus starring in their very own ‘Duel in the Sun’ at the Open Championship in Turnberry two years later.

The Crusaders against the Chiefs had more than a taste of the same brutal, beautiful give-and-take symmetry about it. After trailing 19-3 just before half-time, the Chiefs came roaring back to score the next 32 points and win by 35-19. The tale of the tape in the second half was 25-0 to Clayton McMillan’s men, and they have made it a habit to be stronger at the finish than they are at the start of games this season.

What is the overall statistical picture? Look at the following figures, up to and including round 12 of the tournament.

Among the New Zealand-based franchises, only Moana Pasifika can compete in terms of pure second-half scoring, but after their second-half blitz at the quaintly named Apollo Projects Stadium, the Chiefs had overtaken the Pasifika comeback kings, who were on a bye in round 13. Their total of 234 points scored, with a massive points differential of +91 in the period after oranges, dwarfs all rivals.

The point was not lost on Crusaders head coach Rob Penney afterwards.

“It was a bit of a lesson, how we respond now will be critical,” he said.

“How they were able to go through us – particularly at the back end [of the game]. They were pretty ruthless, and we weren’t able to counter it.

“We were just a little bit below where we needed to be. We were still making too many tackles [a grand total of 209].

“They are notorious for going hard after halftime – we expected it but weren’t able to combat it.”

We live in a rugby era when the way you finish is more important than the way you start. Since Rassie Erasmus first experimented with the 7/1 forwards/backs bench split for the Springboks in mid-2023, more and more top teams have taken up the torch, with France winning this year’s Six Nations on the back of the 7/1, and second-placed England finishing with a demolition of Wales in Cardiff featuring back-rower Ben Earl playing in their midfield.

While McMillan has largely stuck by the more traditional 5/3 split, he went heavy with his tight forwards on the pine for the crucial encounter in Christchurch. The five included three full All Blacks in Samisoni Taukei’aho, Josh Lord and Samipeni Finau, and another would-be Wallaby in prop Aidan Ross.

Whether you go for the full forward overhaul a la Rassie and Fabien Galthié around the 50-minute mark, or McMillan’s partial revamp, you need to ensure you have the right mix of forwards who can go the full 80-minute distance without losing effectiveness – to wit Luke Jacobsen and Wallace Sititi – and those who can bring undeniable physical impact off the bench.

When you get it right, it will give you priceless control of the contact zone. The Chiefs forced their hosts to make a colossal 209 tackles, and the home side conceded eight of the nine penalties that referee Ben O’Keefe awarded at the ruck. They were all in defence, for offences as various as not rolling away from the tackle zone, illegal use of the hands and failure to release the ball-carrier. Midway through the second period, O’Keefe had become so exasperated he issued a general warning for repeated red and black indiscretions in the same area.

Two forwards who epitomised the Chiefs’ control of the collision zone and the ruck following the carry were one starter – number eight Sititi – and one finisher, in the shape of mountainous replacement hooker Taukei’aho.

Sititi led all forward runners on either side with an enormous 22 carries for 130m and two tackle busts, while featuring on 12 occasions at first receiver to take the pressure off Damian McKenzie. Meanwhile Taukei’aho thoroughly enjoyed his five carries for 40m in only 19 minutes of ball-in-play time, two more tackle busts and 100% gainline success. He also hit on two other perfect scores, with five out of five successful lineout throws and six tackles completed with no misses.

McMillan backed up Penney’s comments after the match: “We rolled up the sleeves and just went through the front [door]. We were patient enough to wait for the opportunity, I think this was Chiefs rugby at its best. ”

The seminal sequence of play arrived in the 72^nd minute, with Chiefs scrum-half Cortez Ratima feeding an attacking scrum near halfway. They went through 18 phases in just under two minutes before Sititi grounded the ball over the try line. By the end of it the Crusaders looked utterly dazed and confused, as if they had been tossed out of a combine harvester like chaff, such was their opponents’ control of the contact zone.

The visitors built power upon power upon power, with carries by Sititi leading straight into runs by Taukei’aho and their main power-carrying back, 12 Quinn Tupaea.

Nothing fancy, no last-gasp in-passes or tip-ons; just hard carries with two men in close support obliterating all resistance fore and aft. For most of the time, the Chiefs had 12 or even 13 men visible in the screenshot ‘box’.

First, Jacobson and Emoni Narawa, followed by another rumbustious, hard-shouldered carry by Taukei’aho – a big right-hand following the two jabs. Then Sititi, tagging along behind. Never more than one pass off nine, focus on clean-out not pass or, heaven forbid, the spectre of an offload.

It is fittingly none other than Sititi who plants the ball over the Crusaders line to score within a sequence when he carried the ball four times in 18 phases, with Taukei’aho contributing two big runs and three cleanouts of his own.

The greatest rivalry in New Zealand rugby over recent years has unquestionably featured the Crusaders in one corner and the Chiefs in the other. It may yet prove to be so once again in the grand final of Super Rugby Pacific 2025, because right now, the two clubs are the best the competition has to offer.

All Blacks supremo ‘Razor’ Robertson would do well to take a leaf out of McMillan’s playbook, and in particular his emphasis on the bench and the second half of games – an area in which the national team struggled in Razor’s rookie season. Two of McMillan’s charges who should emphatically make the cut are Sititi and Taukei’aho. One is a proper 80-minute man with a huge engine, the other is the very definition of the phrase ‘impact player’.

The Chiefs and Crusaders may never walk off the 18^th green arm-in-arm in the evening sunshine, as Nicklaus and Watson once did 48 years distant, but together they can restore the pride of New Zealand rugby in a new era.

As the telly commentary on ‘The Duel in the Sun’ reminded: “Does it seem old-fashioned, or sentimental to conclude that this was one man’s title but two men’s championship? And that one complemented and motivated the other? And that to a venerable championship, now hugely professional in the commercial age, they brought a shared respect and dignity that is more to their credit, so great is the reward. They did all those things.”