Rugby: Highlanders to tackle Chiefs unchanged

Issac Ross will wear a Chiefs jersey when he faces his old team tonight in Dunedin. Photo / Christine Cornege

Sometimes it's just a little bit of luck, a freak result perhaps, that can kickstart a campaign. The Highlanders might have got that in Wellington last week, the Chiefs are still desperately looking for their slice.

If you had told the Chiefs last April 4, the day after they had beaten the Highlanders to move to fifth equal on the ladder, that they would be meeting the same opposition the next year without having another tick in the win column, nobody would have believed you.

Almost, but not quite, as improbable was the prospect of the Highlanders, fresh off the back of a three-win, 10-loss season, venturing to the capital and beating the Hurricanes in the opening Super Rugby match.

So it is the Highlanders who embrace the Chiefs with a sprinkle of confidence. Sure, the 14-9 win against the Hurricanes owed more to the home side's ineptitude than the southerners' brilliance, but it has enabled coach Jamie Joseph to name a virtually unchanged side. The only cull has been a swapping of the reserve hookers, with veteran Mahonri Schwalger coming in for Brayden Mitchell, who is paying for the inglorious cameo that saw him take the Westpac Stadium turf and promptly get himself sinbinned.

"The guys have done nothing wrong and are coming off a big win," Joseph said this week.

Chiefs coach Ian Foster could hardly have taken a more different tack, making eight changes, some of them enforced, to his starting side alone.

Foster has completely remodelled his inside back trio, with Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Mike Delany and Dwayne Sweeney replacing Brendon Leonard, Stephen Donald and Tana Umaga.

That's one way of putting it. Another is to say the Chiefs coach has swapped 109 All Black test caps with one.

The locks have been replaced as well, but that owes more to injury than form. Craig Clarke was not considered because of a head injury, while Romana Graham's cramps at the end of the Brumbies game convinced Foster to rest him this week.

That will see Isaac Ross and Hayden Triggs paired up in Chiefs jerseys against the team they represented together in 2008.

Opposing them will be 2010 Chief Jarrad Hoeata and the highly regarded Southland second-rower Josh Bekhuis.