Her previous 24 caps had all been in the second row, but Wales head coach Ioan Cunningham gave her the chance to start in the back row for the first time against the Black Ferns.
Her extra size and physicality made a great impact to a Welsh eight that enjoyed some notable success at scrum and line-out time against the host nation. Now she hopes to be given another chance to start in the winner-takes-all clash with Australia at the Northland Events Centre in Whangarei on Saturday.
“It was a pretty surreal moment standing there facing the Haka in my first World Cup game. It was a special moment and one I won’t forget,” said Crabb.
“We can take confidence from the fact we dominated a big New Zealand pack for so long at the set-pieces. We built on our set-piece against Scotland and it improved even more.
“We got even more penalties around the scrum and maul. We have to take that forward and make sure we capitalise on the opportunities that come off the back of it.
“We have to review the opportunities we left out there against New Zealand. Going into the game our aim was to score four tries, we got two and left four or five out there on the field. We are frustrated about that, but also excited because we have a game against Australia coming up.”
Among the other improvements made by Wales during their time down under at the World Cup has been their starts to games. Getting off to a good start against Australia this weekend will be vital.
“Coming out of the Six Nations we wanted to make sure we started games better and I think we’ve done that at this World Cup. Now it’s a case of being consistent over the 80 minutes,” added Crabb.
“At the moment we are having peaks and troughs – we’re starting well, but then dipping down and allowing teams in. Our sights are on a quarter-final place and we know what we’ve got to do to get there.
“Given the amount of opportunities we created in attack against New Zealand, it is exciting. We need to tighten up our defence, but it is a very exciting challenge going into the game against Australia.”
The top two teams in each Group go through by right to the qaurter-finals, and the two best placed teams in third place will join them. Both Wales and Australia have four points ahead of the game with Australia ahead on points difference.
Now the challenge for the Welsh side, who have been given extra time off this week to recover for Saturday’s showdown, is to put a year-long preparation as professional players into the best performance of their careers in windy Whangarei.
Attack coach Richard Whiffin said, “All our thoughts and efforts will be going into getting a performance against Australia that will allow us to stay for at least another week. We will be better for the experiences we had against the Black Ferns. We had eight shots five metres out from their line and only went over twice. The game could have been closer.
“We were disappointed we didn’t come away with a bonus-point because we had enough chances. Scotland took it to Australia with their driving maul and got two scores off the back of that and their line speed was impressive as well.
“There are opportunities for us to put pressure on the Australians. The Scottish kicking game was good as well and the wind does whistle in at Whangarei, so we have to get our kicking game right.
“We have key strike runners on the wings and we got Lisa Neumann on the ball six times and Jazz Joyce five times against New Zealand. If we can get them the ball to them they can be really dangerous.”
