Relaxed approach way to go for Highlanders

As the pressure piles up on the Highlanders to win tomorrow's Super 14 match against the Western Force, No 8 Craig Newby says a relaxed approach is the way to go about it.

The Highlanders have squeezed out wins through hard work and been squeezed out of games when they've undone their own work, he said.

Some experts have suggested New Zealand's southern-most franchise are going much in the same way as the northern-most side, the Blues.

Both teams have been stifled by a regimented approach which has not suited most of the players, particularly in the backlines, observers say.

Neither side can start looking at the top unless they string together a few more wins quickly.

The Highlanders lost 13-16 to the Chiefs last week.

They believe that could have been won easily.

"That game's been the story of our season," Newby said.

A week earlier they beat the Cats 16-14 and the week before that they choked, losing 26-11 by the Sharks. That followed two wins in South Africa from three -- a 16-23 defeat by the Bulls, a 30-15 win over the Storm and a 17-12 victory over the Cheetahs.

Apart from their first-up loss to the Crusaders (15-38), they have largely lived dangerously in the dying minutes of their games -- win or lose.

"When we've looked over the games we found it wasn't the teams playing against us that did spectacularly well to beat us. It was sort of our mistakes that have crept into our game this year," Newby said.

"It's something we've been trying to work out in our training and stuff, but it's been different things each week."

The errors have ranged from handling, losing the ball in the tackle or lineout to option-taking.

"I think we need to relax a bit even though we're under pressure," Newby said.

"We started off the season well -- scoring a few tries and enjoying the footy, but I think we've got shackled up a bit and sort of started to play percentage rugby too much. We're still there to do that in the right parts of the field but I think we need to get a bit more of the attacking mentality and that's something we're working on already this week.

"Everyone's said we've always had a strong pack here and this year I think we've got one of the best backlines in many years, so there is no reason why we can't attack. If we can do that then it could start our team rolling.

"Everyone always tries to play the perfect game but we haven't, by any stretch of the imagination, put together a full 80 minutes of what we wanted to do."

"It would be nice to win but to play well and win would be even better."

The John Mitchell-coached Western Force have yet to win a game. They earned their first point in last week's narrow loss to the Stormers but have shown steady improvement over the last three weeks.

"They're getting better and better, they should have won against the Stormers," Newby said.

"For a side like that, they've got nothing to lose and will be looking to trip us up.

"We've got a few hard games coming up -- the Hurricanes, Waratahs and the Brumbies included -- so we really can't afford to drop this game."

- NZPA