The Canterbury Crusaders kept their march toward an eighth Super rugby title alive with a crushing 36-8 victory over the Coastal Sharks in their sudden-death qualifier yesterday.
The storming win courtesy of a second-period onslaught puts the homeless Crusaders on a dash to Cape Town to play the Western Stormers in the semi-finals next weekend.
In a titanic clash between two sides who relished an intensely physical forward battle, just one try separated them early in the second half, before the Crusaders unleashed 23 unanswered points.
They outscored the Sharks three tries to one with the game turning on a runaway intercept try by captain Kieran Read midway through the second half from which the Sharks never recovered.
As the New Zealand conference champions stepped up the pace, the travel fatigue began to tell on the Sharks, who had an eventful trip to Nelson because of flight disruptions caused by the ash cloud from Chile’s Puyehue volcano.
Read said patience was the key for his side after the Sharks had the better of the early exchanges.
Sharks captain Stefan Terblanche was amazed at how the Crusaders continued to dominate despite being on the road for every game after the devastating February earthquake in Christchurch, which made their stadium unplayable.
The Sharks conceded points from the kick off when they tried to run themselves out of trouble, but instead fell foul of the referee at the first maul leaving Dan Carter with a simple shot at goal.
The Sharks put the first try on the board when scrumhalf Charl McLeod cut through a gaping hole in a Crusaders lineout to ignite a 65m run, which resulted in Willem Alberts crashing through the scrambling Crusaders defense.
McLeod’s ingenuity in the sixth minute was the only telling break in the tensely contested match until 25 minutes later when Matt Todd freed up Sonny Bill Williams for an end-to-end break by the Crusaders.
The final pass in the move to Zac Guildford was lost, but the Crusaders pack monstered the Sharks off the ball in the scrum and Sean Maitland, coming back from a long injury break, sent Williams over.
Carter, who missed two penalties in the half, landed the conversion and another penalty for the Crusaders to lead 13-5 at the turn.
Patrick Lambie narrowed the gap to 13-8 with a penalty early in the second half, before the Crusaders began to click, first with another Carter penalty and then Read’s perfectly anticipated intercept try.
The All Blacks backrower had waited patiently midfield as both sides entered into a lengthy kicking duel and when Shark’s fly-half Frederic Michalak decided it was time to run again Read was waiting to snaffle a floating pass.
The try took the fight out of the Sharks, who struggled to reach the halfway line for the remaining 30 minutes.
Carter landed two more penalties for a match haul of 19 points and replacement prop Ben Franks scored a late try.
In the semi-finals, the Crusaders play the Stormers, while the Auckland Blues play the Queensland Reds in Brisbane.
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