Captain Christie thriving under new regime
Shane Christie will be attempting to lead his Tasman side to a semifinal win over Taranaki on Sunday.
Shane Christie is in a good space right now.
The Tasman Makos' inspirational captain has played a significant role this season in helping to mould a relatively new squad under a new coaching regime, culminating in the team qualifying for Sunday's Mitre 10 Cup premiership rugby semifinal clash with Taranaki at New Plymouth's Yarrow Stadium.
While it's not a conversation Christie would comfortably wish to get himself involved in, his on-field presence this season has been exceptional.
Tasman are a better side with the tough 31-year-old flanker on the field although a frustrating reality of Christie's rugby career has been a high attrition rate which has seen him often sidelined by injury.
He's had his niggles this season, including a couple of non-starts, but he's fine now and excited about the prospect of leading his team into what will be a torrid encounter on Sunday - and his 72nd outing for the province since debuting in 2010.
"Myself and the squad's in pretty good nick actually after three games in a week," Christie said.
Tasman head coach Leon MacDonald had been on record earlier this season praising his skipper's influence. He said that Christie had been "on fire both on and off the field" and a major influence in the team's development.
"He's really driving his team mates hard [at training] to lift the standard," MacDonald said.
Still, it's been a gradual process getting the team to its current position.
"We had a bunch of new guys who didn't know the systems, we had new phase play attack and all sorts of things to change and trying to rebuild our culture," Christie said.
"So we weren't getting bonus points but we were still winning even though it was just by a couple of points here and there. We're in the right position at the moment anyway which is awesome. We've come a long way I think."
Christie has certainly thrived in the new environment created by MacDonald and his assistant Mark Hammett.
"I think this year's been my most enjoyable season [with Tasman], just from how much effort everyone's put in for each other and our team and how quickly we've grown.
"It's been an achievement, I think, just to get to here and hopefully we can push on. We're in good spirits and we're in a pretty good position to give ourselves a crack at it anyway."
While Tasman's 25-20 third round win over Taranaki in Nelson provided an obvious psychological boost, Christie said that the two teams would enter Sunday's semifinal on level pegging.
"We're probably about even for the last couple of years but they've won important ones against us.
"But this week, it'll be two different teams I guess and it's a pretty massive game obviously and all we can do is just prepare well during the week and hope for the best."
He said that Tasman had improved significantly as a team since their previous clash.
"Definitely, but I guess both teams have. When we beat Taranaki at the start of the year, we weren't half the team then that we are now, so that's a big change for us anyway.
"I'm looking forward to it. They always get an awesome crowd up there and heaps of support.
"Both forward packs are really physical, but they've got a few big threats out in their backline that will test our defence. It's going to be pretty exciting."
Tasman's building nicely although impressive wins over Auckland and Southland over the past few weeks have been tempered by their recent close call in Albany - which Christie missed through injury.
"The week before last we drew with North Harbour and that was a disappointing game for us. But it's done enough to keep us on our toes really. We don't want to think we're anything too special coming into this [semifinal]."
Nevertheless, Christie is delighted with the squad's development.
"It's just our growth, some of the young fellas that have come through massively, whether they're coming off the bench or starting. They're going really well, loving it.
"We've grown as a team and individual players are just starting to step up at the right time and everybody's starting to show some good form."
