Gregor Paul: Highlanders have turned back the clock

Highlanders coach Jamie Joseph didn't give his side any mental grey areas in which they could hide ahead of their opening clash with the Chiefs. Photo / Getty Images

It's a touch ironic perhaps that old school values will be the making of the Highlanders but have been the killing of Otago.

The Highlanders were in many ways the best thing about the opening weekend. They came to Hamilton amidst a serious injury crises that had already seen them raid the ranks of the Chiefs wider training squad and force 37-year-old scrum coach Kees Meeuws into the Auckland heat the previous week.

Yet there was no negative talk from them in the build-up to their first game. There were a million excuses for them to reach for but never did.

Coach Jamie Joseph didn't give his side any mental grey areas in which they could hide. They came to Hamilton to win - pure and simple and they played like a team that knew it wouldn't be good enough to say they were competitive and congratulate themselves for coming close what with all those injuries.

Old school - that's Joseph and that's the mentality he's installed at the Highlanders. The best bit of all was the selection of former All Black Tamati Ellison at centre. Ellison arrived in Dunedin on Friday after finishing his second season in Japan.

The temptation would have been strong to leave him out of the starting line-up and introduce him this week. But Joseph hasn't yet allowed his mind to be corrupted by the modern obsession with structures and systems.

He applied an old thing called common sense. Ellison was match conditioned from a 12-game season and by all accounts in good form. Joseph could worry about systems and structures or he could just trust that Ellison, as a skilled and intelligent footballer, would work things out on the field.

Rugby, after all, is not as complex as some would have you believe. It's a game of pass and catch; tackle and run. Ellison can do the lot as he demonstrated in what was close to a man of the match performance.

Joseph did other things last year like instruct the players to complete a brutal conditioning session and tell them he and the other coaches would leave them to it as they were off home. A secret camera filmed the lot and the bloke who strolled away early didn't feature much for the rest of the season.

If, as some modernists claim, there is no appetite for this style of coaching, how come the Highlanders improved so dramatically in Joseph's first year? How come the likes of Ellison and Hosea Gear were happy to leave better paid, supposedly bigger teams to join the Highlanders? How come it was the Highlanders and not the Chiefs who dominated territory and possession in their opening game and played with mental resilience and passion when it really mattered?

The Highlanders have turned back the clock and are in the process of re-establishing themselves as a New Zealand heavyweight. They have won back the hearts and minds of their players, of their community and maybe as this season develops, the wider New Zealand rugby public.