Highlanders in no Mauger rush
The Highlanders won’t make a decision on their head coach for the 2021 season until the end of the current campaign but have confirmed that Aaron Mauger wants to remain in Dunedin for ‘‘the long term’’.
‘‘The coaching group is working well together and they’re doing everything they can to get the best out of this group,’’ Highlanders CEO Roger Clark told Stuff yesterday.
‘‘There’s not one thing you point to, except to say we’re not good enough at the minute, to say why we’re not winning.
‘‘[But] no matter win or lose our strategy won’t change.
‘‘We’ll appoint our coaching group for 2021 as close to June as we can.
‘‘There won’t be a stage during the season where we’ll say, ‘if we lose x amount of games we’re going to name our coaching group’.
‘‘We won’t do that until the end of the season. Because of the fact we’re got a core group [Tony Brown and Clarke Dermody] already signed there’s no rush to do that.
‘‘If it was having an effect on [player] recruitment then you would, but that’s not happening at the moment.’’
The Highlanders lost heavily to the Bulls at the weekend, a result that keeps them on the bottom of New Zealand conference with just on win so far this year.
That has put pressure on Mauger, who is in the last year of a three-year deal with the Highlanders, and Clark admitted the franchise was ‘‘not happy with where we are at at the moment’’.
Mauger, 39, is a smart, promising coach who feels the Highlanders losses deeply and has admirably kept his perspective even as the losses have piled up this year.
Mauger also remains involved in planning for next year, with Clark revealing that in the past few weeks he was part of player recruitment conversations with Brown and Dermody for 2021.
But rugby is increasingly a bottom-line business in New Zealand and the Highlanders need to see some wins to keep the fans coming to Forsyth Barr Stadium, where the Highlanders have already lost twice this year.
Those two defeats had contributed to what Clark called ‘‘a tough season’’ so far as some players had failed to step up as expected.
‘‘But that’s not all about coaching,’’ Clark said. ‘‘With the good group of players we’ve lost we haven’t been able to replace them as quickly as we would have liked to.
‘‘When you select your team at the start of the season you’d like to think a nucleus of the guys who you’ve had in there are going to be able to step up to that level.
‘‘Some of them are finding it harder than others to do that as quickly as you would have liked, or need.’’
The Highlanders have Brown and Dermody locked in beyond 2020, with Mauger and Mark Hammett coming off contract this year.
Brown and Dermody’s contract status has given the Highlanders some breathing room with regards to the head coaching position and Clark said the franchise was frequently assessing what it can do better.
‘‘At this stage I don’t envisage us finalising our coaching team until June for next year.’’
The Highlanders have had poor seasons before. In 2013, Jamie Joseph won just three games but kept his job and then developed into a world-class coach.
However, Clark was wary of drawing too many parallels between that season and 2020.
‘‘2013 was earlier, it was only our third year together and we made some mistakes, strategic and selection mistakes.
‘‘This year it’s quite different. We’ve got quite a young team. We haven’t got the same challenges we had in 2013 except the results.’’
REST WEEK HITS HARD P30-31