Highlanders prepare for graveyard shift
The Highlanders will have to kickstart their season in one of Super Rugby’s most difficult arenas.
The Brumbies have won 10 games straight in Canberra and three of their last four against New Zealand opposition in Australia’s capital, including a 54-17 drubbing of the Chiefs in round two of Super Rugby last year.
Add in the fact the Highlanders were poor last week in the areas where the Brumbies are traditionally strong – in contact, at the breakdown and under the high ball – and all the signs are pointing to a tough evening at the office for the men from the deep south after their 12-hour journey from Dunedin.
Some of the errors that cost them against the Sharks last weekend concerned dropped passes, getting bundled into touch, going into contact too high and aimless kicking. The guilty parties were not all debutants, either.
However, if there is some consolation to be taken from the 40-22 loss, it was the amount of chances the Highlanders manufactured even though individual performances needed to be sharper.
‘‘We were just a bit overeager at times last week,’’ head coach Aaron Mauger said. ‘‘A couple of dropped balls with the line open. So, we created opportunities.
‘‘I that’s probably just a reflection of a young team – really keen but a little bit rusty.
‘‘With anther week of training under our belt and if we take the lesson out of the Sharks game I think we should be in a better space on Saturday night.’’
That’s a message that explains the largely consistent selections for the Highlanders this week.
The Mitch Hunt-Josh Ioane partnership at No 10-No 12 will naturally remain under scrutiny but it would have been a kneejerk reaction to put it in the bin after just one game after months of preseason training.
Wing Tima Fainga’anuku was cut but he probably saw that coming after being turned over in the tackle a few times after going into contact too upright.
It was from these errors that the Sharks pounced and the Highlanders were also poor at managing the game as it snowballed out of control just before halftime.
But they are banking on their overall game improving exponentially once these individual mistakes are eradicated.
‘‘It’s just a few subtle things – there’s no majors,’’ said loose forward Dillon Hunt. ‘‘There’s nothing that we can’t fix.
‘‘We’ve spent a long time building our game through the preseason, so the main rocks are there. It’s just about polishing up those early errors from the first round.
‘‘We’ve got to have trust. We’ve done the work, we’re fit, we’re ready.
‘‘We’ve just got to trust the game plan. Obviously, we’ve got to iron out a few kinks but we’re ready to do that.
‘‘Our carry was – we were getting quite high sometimes – and our cleaners were a bit slow so that’s a big focus and we’ve done a lot of work on that.’’