The south will rise again
The TAB currently has the defending champions as second favourite for this year’s Super Rugby crown, though don’t bet on it. Sure the Highlanders did finish runner-up in the New Zealand conference and barring a bizarre sequence of results a Kiwi team will be crowned on August 6, but with the odds on a repeat of last year’s final at Westpac Stadium . . . well you, I, and every long-suffering Hurricanes fan already knows how that plays out.
Pessimists might point to the Highlanders’ poor record against the Brumbies – they haven’t won in the Australian capital in four visits since 2006 – but Canberra Stadium is not the foreboding fortress it once was.
Confidence, meanwhile, is sky-high down south. The Highlanders have only lost one game since a mid-season hiccup saw them lose by a point to the woeful Reds in Brisbane before suffering the same fate – albeit it with 14-men for more than an hour – against the Sharks in Dunedin.
Granted, there was also a last-minute loss to the Hurricanes, yet history suggests that’s hardly a bad omen [see above].
Assuming the Highlanders advance to the semifinals – and the other games pan out for the Kiwi teams, they’ll host a semifinal against the Chiefs – a jet-lagged team they have beaten six times in a row.
Permutations aside, there’s also the personnel to consider. Jamie Joseph’s All Blacks contingent are all fit, and firing, particularly the quartet of Ben Smith, Aaron Smith, Lima Sopoaga and Waisake Naholo.
Then there’s the Joseph factor. What better way to say ‘‘sayonara’’ to the coach who has been integral in rejuvenating the franchise with back-to-back titles – an achievement that also reassures successor Tony Brown that the sun will also rise in 2017, before he too heads to Japan.