Penney for your thoughts

Rob Penney.

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Seven years Rob Penney has been at the helm of the Canterbury team, as either an assistant or head coach.

It might not be remembered as the greatest period in the union's history, but it has produced two provincial titles – with a third up for grabs tonight – and three Ranfurly Shield tenures.

Yet those are not the achievements that the 45-year-old takes most pride in.

"The most satisfying thing for me in my time here is that we've never had a disaster," Penney said ahead of the Air New Zealand Cup final against Wellington.

"We've had a couple of years where we've missed out on the semis, but we've always been a competitive team and never laid down. We haven't had an Auckland and finished ninth or 10th, there hasn't been a blow-out and when you consider the amount of talent we've lost in the last five years, that's really good."

The dominant force in New Zealand provincial rugby when Penney played the first of his 101 games for Canterbury in 1985, Penney has taken a lot from the way Auckland – and the Blues – have struggled in recent times.

"Without going too deeply into it, because I don't know the detail, I think one of the key things here is that we've still got a really tight synergy between the rugby people at Crusaders and Canterbury level. Not that long ago, that was starting to become a bit tenuous and it was going to become a weakness. It would be a mistake for that to change."

Only a year ago Penney's own part in that had begun to "become a bit tenuous". The Canterbury Rugby Football Union was in no hurry to reappoint him and it was only beating Wellington in last season's final that earned him a two-year contract extension.

"I'm a small cog in the wheel and I get a lot of satisfaction out of what I do here. I love it and if other people think it's worthy and good, that's great too. Every year I just hope that the board think it's worthy so I can have another crack."

But for how much longer?

"The reality is that I'll have to go somewhere else if I want to kick on. Whether there's opportunities elsewhere, I don't know. I haven't been in a position to either ask or be asked.

"The Crusaders [coaching] group are a young group and they've got a lot of talent so it's highly likely they'll be there for a long time and understandably so."

Departure would be a massive wrench for a man fond of mythologising red-and-black rugby. Having first come into the team at the end of the great Alex Wyllie-led era, Penney credits two men for making Canterbury what it is today.

"It goes back to 1997 and that first season that Smithy [coach Wayne Smith] and [psychologist] Gilbert [Enoka] came into the Crusaders.

"They looked at what had been historically good about Canterbury rugby and made it overt and the best quote I've ever heard around that was Mahatma Gandhi who said `the culture lives in the heart of the people'.

"It's not in the bricks or mortar or the grass, it's about what's in the people and that's why building good teams always comes back to selecting character. If you get the character right, then any team-ness is driven by the people.

"They come in as one person and leave slightly different. It touches them and it draws them in and they don't want to let their mates down, let their peers down. They know everything is being done in their best interests, behind the scenes, so they get to a point where they can't expect any more from anyone else, it's about their own performance."

- © Fairfax NZ News