Brown slams ‘soft’ Highlanders

Highlanders coach Tony Brown has slammed his side’s ‘‘soft’’ preparation and performance in the wake of their golden-point defeat to the Chiefs which he feels has ended their hopes of making the Super Rugby Aotearoa final.

Just a week after being the toast of the competition with their upset of the four-time defending champion Crusaders in Christchurch, the Highlanders are now picking up the pieces after a dramatic 26-23 loss in Dunedin on Saturday night, in a rollercoaster of a competition which now has the Chiefs as the form team.

‘‘This performance should hurt our guys because we had the opportunity to do something great around trying to make the playoffs, and now we’re out of that,’’ Brown said.

The Highlanders sit on 10 points, four behind the secondplaced Blues, but having played one game more than both them and the Chiefs (12).

‘‘I don’t know the mathematics, but for me we had to win all of our [last three] games,’’ said Brown, who lamented a sluggish first half and ‘‘poor’’ goalkicking from Mitch Hunt.

‘‘We just didn’t quite play at the right intensity, we were soft in a few areas of the game, we just didn’t quite play as well as we did last week. We couldn’t prepare ourselves to reach that same intensity, which meant that our game suffered. We were either making silly mistakes or just giving them real soft penalties, which kills everything you’re trying to do around trying to create pressure. I think we just beat ourselves tonight.’’

Asked what was needed to make the Highlanders more of a contender, Brown said: ‘‘That’s time together, it’s leadership, and it’s all of our players believing that we’re better than everyone else in this competition.’’

In a further blow ahead of hosting the Blues on Friday night, lock Pari Pari Parkinson was to be assessed after exiting the game at halftime with some damage to the same ankle which he had reconstruction surgery on last year.

Meanwhile, at the other crest of the rollercoaster, the Chiefs are now right back in the mix for the decider, following a third win on the bounce.

Having started their season with back-to-back defeats in an 11-game losing run, they have come up trumps in three successive thrilling finishes, their latest again thanks to star playmaker Damian Mckenzie, who slotted the extra-time penalty goal.

‘‘Our big players are stepping up and leading the charge for our young guys to follow,’’ coach Clayton Mcmillan said of a performance where All Blacks Anton Lienert-brown and Luke Jacobson were also highly influential.

‘‘No-one gave us too much chance, and it didn’t look too good after two weeks, but we ground away. For us, from week three of the competition, it’s been backs against the wall and just having to work hard and improve our craft.

‘‘So those are encouraging signs from a young squad, but it’d be a lot easier on my heart if we had done a lot better when we were 23-13 up and could have closed the game out there.’’

Prop Angus Ta’avao, who scored one of the Chiefs’ two tries at Forsyth Barr Stadium, said it was ‘‘a different changing room’’ when the wins started happening.

‘‘I think once we got that first one, a little bit of belief creeps in, a few more smiles around the place and it just grows on you,’’ he said.

‘‘You look at those 11 games, and most of them were lost within five points. We’ve just worked really hard on winning those little moments.’’