Otago Daily Times

Highlander­s assistant coach in line for step up

RUGBY

- STEVE HEPBURN

FORMER Southland and All Black prop Clarke Dermody is climbing the coaching tree and could be the next Highlander­s coach.

Dermody brought up his 100th game as a Highlander­s assistant coach in the first match of this year’s Super Rugby Aotearoa competitio­n.

Now he looms as the next cab off the rank after Tony Brown.

Highlander­s chief executive Roger Clark said this week it was hoped when Brown finished his job as head coach in 2022 and returned to help Japan for the Rugby World Cup the following year, Dermody might be ready to take the step up.

Dermody had made some real progress as a coach and worked well with the players, Clark said.

Brown said earlier this week Dermody had developed into a top line forward coach and had rapidly improved the Highlander­s forward pack in the later stages of the Super Rugby Aotearoa competitio­n.

He had taken over the coaching of the forward pack when Mark Hammett indicated he was moving on at the end of the season.

Dermody is into his second year as the cocoach of the Tasman Mitre 10 Cup team. He works with Andrew Goodman as a coaching team.

Riki Flutey will be the skills and attack coach for the Highlander­s while the franchise is looking for a defence coach and Clark said they would be going to the market to get the right person.

The franchise may also look at getting spot coaches in from time to time. A spot coach is a specialist coach who may come in to work on an aspect of the game for a short period of time.

Dermody (40) played for the

Highlander­s from 200407 as a prop and also played three tests for the All Blacks in 2006. He made 89 appearance­s for Southland.

He then headed overseas to play for London Irish for a few seasons in the English Premiershi­p but returned home due to a back injury.

Dermody then took a break from the game before being asked by Highlander­s coach Jamie Joseph to come up and help the Highlander­s scrum in 2014.

He has been with the franchise ever since and has slowly become part of the furniture in the Highlander­s coaching setup over the past few seasons.

The Highlander­s will not assemble for preseason training until the new year. Players will not be finishing the domestic competitio­n until the middle of next month at the earliest and under the players’ collective agreement will then be on leave for a period.

The full structure of next year’s Super Rugby competitio­n has yet to be revealed but it is likely to start at the end of February or even mid March and will involve initially just New Zealand teams, before taking on Australian teams in a form of playoffs later on.

That all depends on the situation with borders and quarantine.

 ??  ?? Clarke Dermody
Clarke Dermody

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