APNZ's Patrick McKendry looks at how a throwback approach has worked for the table-topping Highlanders.
1. Team bonding
Putting players through testing situations to break down barriers and share a common experience is so common in professional sport it has become a cliche. The Highlanders, though, have gone back to basics. Forget confidence courses, army training or wading through mangrove swamps, these guys organise their own fishing trips in the middle of Foveaux Strait. Once you're out on this unforgiving stretch of water between Bluff and Stewart Island, there is no calling it quits if you feel like heading home for a snack and a lie on the couch. It's a form of commitment seen in their playing style.
They're also not averse to a few beers. It's understood that after the team's second pre-season game in Queenstown, against the Chiefs, the players were allowed to, shall we say, let their hair down. Some didn't make it to bed until 6 o'clock the next morning. Unorthodox? In modern sport, yes. Effective? You can't argue with four victories from four matches.
2. Attacking the breakdown
The Highlanders are the one team in the competition who seem to have this phase mastered. Where others might see a ruck as unwinnable, the Highlanders see every one as an opportunity. Last season they put numbers into the breakdown and caused problems for the opposition, while somehow still being able to hold their line out wide. This year they are doing just as well but by committing fewer players - although it helps to have an expert ball-snaffler like Andrew Hore on board. The modern game has turned the breakdown into a rugby league-style wrestle-fest with accompanying defensive line. The Highlanders' commitment and, at times ferocity in this area, is the closest thing to rucking we have seen in a while.
3. Jamie Joseph calls the shots
The coach-as-the-absolute-boss approach clearly still has its place in modern sport - just think Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson - despite the move towards a more consensus-driven way of making decisions to cater for Generation Y players. In the last decade, top-level New Zealand rugby has made a shift towards consulting players, especially senior ones, before making important decisions. Mark Hammett's clear-out at the Hurricanes is an obvious exception to this rule but in other areas the former All Blacks hooker is known to carefully weigh his players' thoughts. Joseph, though, seems to be from the Ferguson mould. There's nothing like keeping your players guessing, either, which is what he did during a pre-season training session. Setting his players several tasks, he and the rest of his management then left. What the players didn't know was he had set up a video camera in the grandstand so he could observe. It's understood a player who left the session early has paid the consequences. Put it this way, would you argue with Jamie?
