Opening defeats promise Crusaders-Chiefs fixture will be tough encounter. | Canterbury Sport | Surfing, Rugby, Soccer, Football, Cricket in Canterbury

The bond between Vern Cotter and his players that made Bay of Plenty such a force in the NPC and Ranfurly Shield last year is well and truly severed this week.

Cotter will come up against his Steamers players when the Crusaders meet the Chiefs at Jade tonight.

And with both teams coming off defeats in Australia on the opening weekend, it will be "a tough old clash," said Cotter.

Four of his BOP players started and four were on the bench when the Chiefs lost 7-25 to the Waratahs in the Mat Rogers Show.

Cotter enjoyed a bit of banter with his Chiefs players before Super 12 kicked off, but this week it's all deadly serious.

The Chiefs didn't get the line breaks early on to give them confidence last weekend and seemed to lose confidence as the Waratahs defence took hold of them, he said.

However, the Crusaders were not reading too much into that game.

"It was a hot night in Sydney, and just knowing a little about their organisation they're reasonably proud and they'll be unhappy with the way they played.

"They'll be tough and they'll be working on their organisation to make sure they can control the ball for longer periods and put us under pressure."

Cotter expects the Chiefs to as always back their forward pack at set piece and then use the possession.

"Depending on their selection they'll probably try and penetrate midfield off targets early on. They didn't get that against the Waratahs and perhaps they'll come back to something simple.

They didn't get much of the game in the second half."

The Crusaders, too, have to put a defeat behind them, and in spite of it the feeling was positive this week, said Cotter.

"Certainly straight after the game the mood was, 'we definitely know we can improve on that.' And that was very encouraging.

"That positive aspect has been brought into training early on this week and it's great to see."

The Crusaders had to play played with 14 men for 10min, and struggled a little bit with the referee's decision-making, he said. "And that's just early season, taking the creases out of what was quite an intense game."

While South African ref Mark Lawrence won't be getting a Christmas card from the Crusaders, Cotter said it didn't matter who was refereeing.

"You can't change decisions. And we want to make sure we can take any doubtful decisions. We don't want to keep the game close enough so he has an influence. So our focus is to make sure we effectively do our tasks as best as possible."

This week the Crusaders had to go back to the simple task of making sure that their set pieces were good again, and look to use the ball more effectively at times, he said.

And maintaining pressure from start to finish was one of the emphases the players were quite keen to improve.

Kevin O'Neill acquitted himself well in his first Super 12 game, but credit had to be given to the Brumbies who adapted well, problem solved, and gave the Crusaders difficulties, he said.

"Not so much at scrum time, but certainly at lineout time as the game wore on they seemed to anticipate a little bit better, and we did lose our intensity."

The non-nonsense Crusaders assistant coach aims to make sure that doesn't happen against his old boys tonight.