The Star: March 21, 2019

The Star Thursday March 21 2019
news online at www.star.kiwi
SPORT 33
Lancaster’s big impact on and off-field
From player
to rugby
executive
•Over the Super Rugby season, The Star
will look back each week at some of the
identities who graced the Crusaders jersey in
the past and discover where they are now
• By Gordon Findlater
STEVE Lancaster’s contributions
to the Crusaders and rugby as a
whole have been just as big off
the field as they were on it.
The lock played 26 matches
for the Crusaders from 1997-
2000. He is now New Zealand
Rugby’s head of participation
and development. While his
Crusaders playing days only
consisted of four years, his career
in rugby management has seen
him spend 13 years in total with
the franchise.
Lancaster was recruited as a
player following the end of the
Crusaders first Super Rugby
season in 1996, which saw them
finish last in the competition.
Before joining the franchise,
Lancaster was playing club rugby
in Auckland after returning
from a three-year stint in Japan
with Yamaha Júbilo.
“I finished university and did
the Kiwi OE thing. I thought
rugby was a pretty good vehicle
to play in Japan . . . this is before
rugby is professional, so I wasn’t
setting myself up like guys do
these days, but it was a great
experience,” said Lancaster.
While he knew he had joined
a team which struggled in their
first campaign, he was confident
he had joined a Crusaders
programme which had the right
tools in place to succeed.
“It was a pretty compelling
proposition actually in terms of
the set up, and the likes of Steve
Tew and Steve Hansen were
involved back then. It was clear
they had some ambition in what
they wanted to achieve with the
team,” said Lancaster.
After a sixth-place finish in
1997, Lancaster went on to win
three straight titles with the
Crusaders from 1998-2000.
“We felt something building.
We probably didn’t anticipate
we’d go on and win the next
three in a row, but there was
definitely a chemistry in that
group,” he said.
While he admits to keeping
the fact he was a born and raised
in Auckland quiet during his
time in Christchurch, the intense
rivalry with the Blues – which
peaked in the 1998 grand-final
– was special for Lancaster, who
now has strong Canterbury
allegiances.
“It was always special when we
came up against Auckland and
the Blues. I played for Marist in
Auckland so I coped plenty from
the Brooke brothers and other
guys who had played for Marist
whenever we met,” he said.
Lancaster also moved south
from Auckland at the same time
as former Crusaders No 8 Steve
Surridge. The pair spent their
early days in Christchurch sharing
a flat where they honed their
cooking skills.
“We had pretty limited repertoires
to be honest. I know
he rated his spag bol pretty
highly and I was the same with
meatballs, so there wasn’t a lot of
variety,” said Lancaster.
During his last year playing
with the team, Lancaster worked
with the Crusaders media adviser
at the time, Sonia Francis,
to develop the pilot for the
franchise’s personal development
programme. This would be the
beginning of a successful career
in rugby management.
“At the end of that season
when I retired, Steve Tew said to
me over a beer one night ‘before
you make any life changing decisions
come and have a chat’. I left
a coffee meeting the next week
with a hand shake on a new job,”
IN THE GAME: Steve
Lancaster played 26
matches at lock for the
Crusaders before going
on to spend a further nine
years with the club in
management roles.
said Lancaster.
After taking a role as the
Crusaders personal development
manager for three years, Lancaster
then worked for the NZRU
as a professional player, coach
and referee manager for three
years, before returning to the
Crusaders in 2006, where he held
the role of high-performance
manager for six years.
In 2012, Lancaster and his
family uprooted to Canada,
where his wife was born, to
begin a role as manager of highperformance
at Rugby Canada.
“I had worked for the biggest
fish in a relatively small pond,
so going to rugby in Canada,
you’re a small fish in a massive
pond. Rugby doesn’t even hit the
national conscience there.”
When Lancaster returned to
New Zealand in 2015, he held
his first position outside of rugby
as Netball New Zealand’s head
of high-performance. He also
briefly held the role of interim
chief executive.
He has been in his current role
at New Zealand Rugby since
2016. “I’m now responsible for all
rugby underneath professional
rugby in New Zealand. So that’s
clubs, schools and junior rugby.
It’s quite a broad role, but it’s effectively
overseeing the amateur
community game in New Zealand,”
said Lancaster.
His role comes with a number
of challenges due to the ever
changing landscape of the professional
game and competing
with the rapid rise in participation
sports such as basketball.
“I remember playing NPC for
Canterbury in front of 27,000
people. That’s just not the reality
anymore. We’ve got a 20-week
Super Rugby competition and
the All Blacks play 14 tests a year,
so there’s just so much rugby
content,” said Lancaster.
“We see the same thing in the
community game. When I was a
kid you could essentially choose
between rugby and soccer and
now the choices are limitless
. . . the onus is on us as a sport to
have a look at the way we offer
and deliver the game, ensuring
that it stays relevant particularly
to young New Zealanders.”
And while his playing days
with the Crusaders are now well
and truly in the past, he says they
can be summed up easily.
“I often tell people we won
three titles and then I retired in
2000. We finished 10th in 2001
so people can draw their own
conclusions about that.”
•The Crusaders play the
Waratahs in Sydney at 9.45pm
on Saturday.
THE ONLY NRL GAME
IN THE SOUTH ISLAND
5PM SAT 30 MAR
CHRISTCHURCH STADIUM
Grab your tickets at
ticketek.co.nz now!