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Highlanders: 'No excuses' against Rebels after hefty Hurricanes loss
By Ned Lester
The Highlanders have shown moments of immense promise and moments of the same inaccuracy that have left them nearer to the bottom of the table than the top over recent seasons, en route to just two wins from six games so far in 2024.
An unbeaten preseason slate sent expectations skyward for the rebuilding squad, but while they've made a fair crack of their season's schedule to date, the numbers in the loss column aren't all that flattering.
The team now face a run of three Australian opponents followed by Moana Pasifika after a bye week in round seven.
Sending the team into that bye week was a contest against an unbeaten Hurricanes outfit in a rich vein of form, who subjected the Southerners to a miserable 47-12 thumping.
Coming off the back of that result, the team is hungry for improvement.
"There were some tough games, but we've got to be better than our last performance," Highlanders assistant coach Dave Dillon told media ahead of the trip to Melbourne to face the Rebels.
"Our mindset is on moving forward, getting a good week's training here, and heading to Melbourne.
"The Rebels have faced some adversity regarding their future. They had a good win over the Drua in front of their crowd over the weekend. They managed to put together back-to-back moments and get the results.
"They are a good side, well-coached and with good balance. We've just got to get our game sorted, which we're working on this week.
"We're always looking for opportunities in how to be better. We were pretty disappointed with what happened against the 'Canes. There are no excuses. We've just got to get into this week.
"It was important after the 'Canes game to narrow down a few critical things, roll up the sleeves, and get into it.
"Everyone was pretty excited about being back into it. There was an air of disappointment about that result, particularly being at home. We'd been pretty good leading into it. But that's the nature of high-performance sport.
"We've got an opportunity to put it right this week."
The Highlanders have experienced plenty of disruptions through injuries and bans thus far in the campaign but will be hoping for a smoother run in the season's second half.
Despite that, the current eighth-place seeding places the team in a quarter-final birth and a win in Melbourne would go a long way in helping gain some separation over teams below them.
Dillon said the bye week had offered an opportunity for the players and staff to spend extended time with family and reset for the upcoming run of fixtures.
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Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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