55 #2
Then a try, muscle and momentum at the corner.
The Crusaders answered with a break that died five meters out.
Another Welsh score followed.
The roar became suffocating.
By halftime, the board read Wales 17 – New Zealand 6.
It felt like the world had tilted.
The tunnel swallowed them whole.
In the locker room, steam and exhaustion pressed low. Claire dropped to her knees in front of Toby, packing his nose. He winked at her.
“Other side’s uglier,” he said. The blood kept coming and coming. Eventually she got out the trusty tampon, unsheathed it and shoved it up his nose.
“You will always be beautiful to me, Toby,” Claire whispered to him.
She moved to Miko, sealing his brow. To Liam, wrapping his ribs tighter. To Jack, checking his shoulder. Hands never still. Breath measured. Focus absolute.
Tania moved through them like a lifeline with electrolyte bottles in one hand, Jack’s energy gels in the other. “Drink. All of it. Yes, even you, Smash. Don’t argue with science.” Miko reluctantly took the gel.
Noah stood at the center, chest heaving, eyes scanning his brothers.
“We’re not done,” he said quietly. “They think we’re finished. They think they beat us.”
A pause.
“They didn’t.”
He met each gaze in turn.
“We’ve bled before. We’ve crawled before. This is just another game, just another battle.”
“We should make a sacrifice,” Kelsey said with the ultimate confidence.
“A sacrifice?” Claire asked under her breath.
Toby reached into his bag and pulled out a single beer.
Coach Reynolds opened his mouth, then closed it.
Toby cracked it, took a long swallow, and passed it.
Each man took a sip. Just one.
Then Toby tipped the can and poured the rest onto the tile between them.
“For the rugby gods,” he said solemnly.
They bowed their heads.
Noah placed his hand over the darkened circle and paused for a moment of silence.
“We go again,” he finally said.
Claire stood at the edge, hands stained, heart steady.
All was not lost.
Not yet.
With a rub of Liam’s head, and a new strategy, they ran back out into the roar like men reborn. Like a phoenix born from ashes.
The whistle cut.
Wales struck first again, hammering forward with renewed confidence. Their fly-half pinned the Crusaders deep with a towering kick. The chase came fast and brutal. Jack absorbed the hit and still managed to turn, driving two men back before going to ground.
“Set!” the referee barked.
Scrum.
Eight bodies bound on each side. Shoulders locked. Heads down. The impact was thunderous.
Claire held her breath.
The Crusaders drove – not back, not sideways, but forward. Inch by inch. Noah barked commands, feet digging into turf, spine unyielding. The Welsh pack faltered. Just a fraction.
The ball popped free.
Miko scooped it, darted left, and offloaded to Kelsey, who burst through a narrowing gap. The crowd gasped. Kelsey chipped ahead, chasing his own kick, but Wales smothered him five meters out.
So close.
But something had shifted.
The Crusaders swarmed the breakdown like wolves. Jack stole possession clean. Noah snapped the pass wide. Liam took it at speed, ribs screaming, and still broke the line. He was dragged down, but the momentum carried forward.
A penalty.
The kick found touch deep in Welsh territory.
Lineout.
The teams formed. Hands gripped jerseys. Calls were whispered. Noah’s eyes flicked once toward the sideline.
Claire lifted her chin.
The ball arced high.
Toby rose like he had wings. Lifted by the team working together.
He caught it clean.
The maul formed instantly. Claire saw the black jerseys binding, legs churning. Wales tried to splinter it. They tried to collapse it. But the Crusaders drove, united, and with relentless fervor.
Five meters.
Three.
Noah peeled off, darted blindside, and dove across the line.
Try.
The stadium roared. Half in fury, half in awe.
The conversion sailed through.
Wales 17 – New Zealand 13.
The Crusaders reset with fire in their veins.
Wales answered with desperation. They tried faster rucks, harder hits, a break down the wing that ended with Jack making a last-ditch tackle that sent both men skidding across turf. Claire felt the ache of it in her own bones. She knew that Jack would be hurting later.
Another scrum.
Midfield.
The Crusaders hit.
They surged.
The ball shot out. Noah took it, stepped inside, drew two defenders, and released the ball to Miko, who sprinted into open space. A pass. Another. Kelsey streaked down the sideline, hair flying, crowd rising.
He was tackled a meter short.
Bodies piled in.
Jack drove over.
Try.
The Crusaders erupted.
Wales 17 – New Zealand 18.
For the first time, doubt flickered in red eyes.
Jack lined up to take the kick.
The ball sailed through the posts in one beautiful conversion.
Wales 17 – New Zealand 20.
Wales threw everything they had left. Phases stacking, tempo relentless. A Welsh forward crashed through and collided with Toby, reopening his nose. Blood sprayed. He stayed upright and kept moving.
Claire shouted for him when the ball finally went dead. He waved her off with a grin and a red-streaked face. He needed to clean off the blood.
Another lineout. Wales stole it.
They surged toward the line.
Meters from glory.
The Crusaders held.
Noah made a tackle that stopped time. Jack ripped the ball free. Liam booted it clear.
The clock bled down.
In the final minutes, a Welsh penalty gave them one last chance – long, ambitious, everything riding on it.
The kick drifted.
Wide.
Out of bounds.
The whistle screamed.
For half a second, no one moved.
Then the Crusaders broke.
They collided in the center of the pitch – laughing, shouting, collapsing into one another. Noah dropped to his knees. Jack hauled him up. Toby hugged everyone in reach, bleeding and victorious.
Claire pressed her hand to her mouth.
They had crossed the world.
They had bled.
And they had won.
Wales 17 – New Zealand 20.
Championship-bound.
Aroha. Whānau. Mana.
There was no celebration.
Not really.
Coach Reynolds let them have the moment on the pitch. He let the noise wash over them, let the cameras catch the victory.
“Showers. Food. Beds.” He gestured to Noah and Toby. “Press pool.”
While the rest of the team funneled toward the buses under strict orders to hydrate, eat, and sleep, two jerseys were pulled aside by media staff and ushered down a side corridor lined with cameras and bright lights.
Noah rolled his neck once, sweat still drying on his skin. Toby dabbed at his nose with a tissue that had long since surrendered to red.
“Try not to bleed on the microphones,” Noah muttered with a cheeky grin.
“No promises.”
They sat beneath a backdrop of sponsors and national crests, shoulders still heaving from war. Flashbulbs popped. A semicircle of reporters leaned forward, hungry.
“Noah, leading the haka in Cardiff, against Wales. What did that moment mean to you?”
Noah’s gaze lifted, steady. “It meant respect,” he said. “For them. For us. For where we come from. You don’t challenge a nation like that unless you’re willing to give everything you got.”
“And then you score in the second half,” another voice cut in. “Did you feel the shift?”
“We did,” Toby said, voice rough. “You don’t cross the world to fold. We’ve been down before. We know how to climb.”
A Welsh reporter raised a brow. “Your nose seems to have paid the price.”
Toby grinned tapping his nose. “Worth it.”
“England in two days,” someone said. “How do you recover from a match like that?”
Noah didn’t hesitate. “We sleep. We listen to our coaches. We trust our medical team. And we show up ready.”
He didn’t say her name.
He didn’t have to.
The rest of the team listened to the interview from the television, suspended in the locker room.
A few of them laughed, breathless and disbelieving.
“We play England in two days,” Coach Reynolds told the team. “You don’t win championships by burning out on the first miracle. You win them by recovering.”
No bar.
No music.
No wandering about the city in victory.
Just sleep.
They ate quietly. Showered in near silence. Limbs heavy, eyes burning with exhaustion. Claire moved through them one last time, checking swelling, re-taping, and icing what needed icing, before finally retreating to her own room, heart still racing even as her body begged for rest.
They would leave Wales in the morning.
Tania said they would take the train. It was faster, simpler, and easier on battered bodies. No airports, no security lines, no pressure changes. Just a chartered carriage waiting at Cardiff Central, windows misted with rain, seats wide enough for legs that barely fit anywhere else.
Wales slipped past in gray-green blurs.
England waited.
And the Crusaders slept as they traveled, heads tipped back, mouths open, bruised hands curled loosely in their laps, they were warriors in transit, conserving everything they had left.