Defiant Highlanders stoke up home fire for comeback bid
Even at 0-4, and ruminating on a clean-sweep by their Kiwi rivals, there is no quit in this Highlanders team. Certainly not while coach Tony Brown is the one delivering the pep-talks.
A defiant Brown refused to accept that a fourth straight defeat for his southerners, 32-20 by the Blues on Friday night at North Harbour Stadium, was any sort of a death knell for his side, even though it leaves them looking up from deep in a large hole in the Super Rugby Pacific competition.
With just one competition point to show from their four matches thus far, the Highlanders face a huge task to turn their season round in time to still make a run at the extended playoffs.
What’s more it looks like the ‘Landers have lost their form player, outstanding young midfielder Thomas UmagaJensen, for at least two to three weeks with a groin strain. He limped off late in the first half, followed soon after by young wing Liam Coombes-Fabling.
‘‘It’s a young Highlanders team, we’ve lost a lot of leadership, and we’ve just got to make sure when the game is on the line, when we’re having to deal with pressure situations, we stay calm and everyone executes their role. Then we’re fine,’’ said Brown after his team rather stalled after leading 13-3 at halftime.
But the feisty coach with the sharp competitive streak did not
want to hear about any white flags being waved in terms of their season goals.
‘‘For me 0-4 against all the New Zealand teams, especially three of them away from home, it’s not the end of our campaign. It’s a bloody tough competition. We play three of our next four games at home now, so when we finish those we’ll know where we’re at.
‘‘We always had the toughest draw coming into this campaign – four New Zealand teams, three away from home, and the trip to Queenstown didn’t help us at all. After these next four rounds we’ll see where we’re at and then we can evaluate.’’
There were some bright spots for the ‘Landers. All Blacks loosie Shannon Frizell put in a big shift, with a team-high 19 tackles, and 40 metres on the carry, including three defenders beaten. They also
harried the Blues into a catalogue of first-half errors, though were perhaps guilty of failing to cash in on that, and the 29th-minute yellow card to Luke Romano when they were awarded a penalty try.
‘‘We didn’t score enough points and not getting a try leading into halftime was part of that,’’ added Brown. ‘‘We’ve just got to be better there. If we’d created a try-scoring opportunity leading into halftime it would have been a better half. We didn’t quite nail that, and that could have been the difference.’’
Brown conceded the injury to hard-running midfielder UmagaJensen was a tough blow.
‘‘He’s having a great season, he’s hard to stop from set piece, and has probably been our best player so far. He’s a big loss.’’
They now face a must-win clash against Moana Pasifilka.