Players and punters will miss Crusaders’ horses, but new mascot needed for new home

Thursday, 16 April 2026

A Crusaders horseman rides around Apollo Projects Stadium for the last time on April 3. The horses will not be going to the new Te Kaha Stadium.

ANALYSIS: The Crusaders’ horses may be scratched for Christchurch’s new stadium, but a senior player insists their legacy will always live on.

Having horses canter around the pitch before kick-off has been a Crusaders institution since the first Super Rugby season in 1996.

But they are being put out to pasture for health and safety reasons when the new $683 million One New Zealand Te Kaha Stadium opens with the Crusaders’ first Super Rugby game there on Friday week.

Unlike the All Blacks’ haka, which has motivational properties and an intimidation factor, the Crusaders horse play is for punters’ pleasure only.

Crusaders players - corralled in their dressing room before kick-off - rarely saw the passing equine parade.

But, hearing thundering hooves skirt Lancaster Park or Apollo Projects stadium was part of the boyhood match-day experience for home-grown Crusaders like Dallas McLeod - raised in Methven, a harness racing breeding ground.

“Thinking back to when I was a young fella, it was always a big part of it,’’ McLeod said of the horses’ cavalcade.

“As much of a shame it is, it’s [about] health and safety. There’s not much we can do about it.

A general view of Te Kaha Stadium - which will be a horse-free zone for Crusaders games.

“But it will always be a big part of the Crusaders’ legacy.”

The horses have been survivors.

In the early years, the riders were chain mail-clad and wielded swords. But that imagery was sensibly jettisoned in 2019 after the Christchurch mosque shootings because of sensitivities around any perceived analogy to the anti-Muslim Crusades of the Middle Ages.

But the horses - steered by riders in Swanndri-style back-country garb - were retained because of their popularity.

Some supporters have watched the horses for 30 years yet never seemed to tire of their plodding presence.

A horse on the loose after the end of pre-match fireworks at the 2008 Super Rugby final at Lancaster Park.

The crowd gave the faithful steeds a standing ovation as they loped at the last game at Apollo Projects Stadium a fortnight ago.

Perhaps the punters sensed they were watching the final furlongs of a much-loved tradition. It certainly seemed there was an extra spring in the beasts’ step to mark the end of the Apollo era.

Sometimes the horses have provided unscheduled entertainment - like in 2008, when an animal spooked by Super Rugby final fireworks broke loose and did a few laps of Lancaster Park with its handlers in pursuit.

Every sporting team needs a mascot. Canterbury rugby fans are eternally grateful that Larry the Lamb has thus far avoided the metaphorical march to the freezing works.

But the horses are casualties of progress, collateral damage, if you like, of the long-awaited move to Te Kaha.

There simply isn’t the room, in and around the new stadium, for them to operate safely, and downsizing to Shetland ponies wouldn’t quite be the same.

The best marketing minds should be working on a new Crusaders’ emblem, befitting the region.

The horses aren’t the only quaint Crusaders’ tradition potentially imperilled by the big move.

Seeing hordes of kids run onto the pitch at Apollo has been a heart-warming experience rarely seen in modern sport. They stayed in droves for up to an hour after the last game there to mingle with their heroes. It’s hard to imagine that tradition transferring to Te Kaha - health and safety and pitch preservation, and all.

So the horses will be missed - if not by the stadium staffer tasked with the most odiferous assignment, on the end of a spade.

The tradition could still be revived for pre-season games at less pristine venues where there is space for gallopers to gambol.

That way, as Dallas McLeod declared, the legacy can live on.