Putting basics in place for Canterbury season

Rob Penney.

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OPINION: We might have won the last two provincial championships but it's no secret that we've lost the first game of the season on each occasion.

We've put that down to the fact that we tried to get the group well connected off the field and were probably a little negligent in some of the on-field stuff. And we make no apology for that.

With many of our players needing time off after the Super rugby season and others involved with national sides, like the Junior All Blacks last year, the Maori this year and the under-20s, we've only got a short time to get into the campaign and we've got to prioritise things.

Hopefully we've got a bit more balance back in the pre-season this year. The boys are certainly telling us they're happy with where we're at rugby-wise. Now it's just a matter of us being really clear about what we want, heading for Friday.

We're happy to be playing Hawke's Bay, who are worthy of their reputation as one of the better teams in the championship. It's public knowledge that they haven't beaten us and want to. We've just got to be ready for it.

It's a really interesting game, actually. We obviously beat them in the semifinal here last year, but we played them in a pool game two weeks prior and they had 15,000 or 16,000 supporters there at McLean Park and we had our All Blacks in.

Then our All Blacks left to go on tour and we lost the Ranfurly Shield to Southland and it was great to see the way the Canterbury public came out and really supported the boys at a time when they needed some help.

We had no All Blacks and Hawke's Bay were pretty confident, coming off that good performance when we did have our All Blacks in, so they came in with the expectation that they were going to do really well. But our boys fronted on the night and I see the situation as being pretty similar this week.

It's a bit backs-to-the-wall, in terms of our preparation and not getting our players until late, and it'd be great to get a good crowd there.

In the past there's been a bit of a disconnect between the team and the public but, as a group, we've made a concerted effort in the last three or four years to fix that.

Finally, plenty of people have asked me whether we're going for a "three-peat" of titles this year. While I can say that winning the competition is one of our visions for the season, it's not something we overtly talk about.

It's there as an over-arching statement driving a lot of what we want to achieve, but it's what you do day by day and minute by minute that's really important.

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