That something different

• Published date: 03 December 2022
• Publication title: Mix, The

The 2015 Super Rugby season did not promise to be anything exceptional for the Highlanders. They had certainly made progress and, after qualifying for the 2014 finals, coach Jamie Joseph could see a foundation forming, built on confidence, values, character and a leadership group that had matured and commanded respect. ‘‘The 2014 season showed that with the right leadership you can achieve anything,’’ he says

While the squad was largely unheralded, Jamie saw in it players who complemented each other, whose qualities and technique he could mould, and who would embrace the game plan and respond to the coaches. His co-captains Ben Smith and Nasi Manu were crucial to ensure the new players bought into the side’s culture and values. ‘‘The way Ben moulded the squad was by being himself, in a very Otago way,’’ says Jamie. Ben had quietly and unassumingly developed from a reluctant leader into a very able co-captain. ‘‘He went from being a Kiwi boy who was good at rugby to an awesome player and captain who was influencing everyone around him.’’

Ben says the Highlanders’ forward pack that season showed Jamie’s ability to spot talent and grow players who did not yet have a reputation, but who worked hard, fitted the team’s culture and had complementary strengths.

‘‘We had a very good backline, but our forwards were journeymen who played as a team,’’ says Jamie. He would utilise the underdog tag — the fact that his uncelebrated forward pack had a point to prove.

The pack embraced that challenge, playing well above their station week after week to out-muscle more fancied teams and provide a platform for a backline that grew in confidence.

In the May 23, round-15 match against the Western Force in Perth, Ben joined Anton Oliver, Jimmy Cowan and Chris King in playing 100 matches for the Highlanders. Remarkably, since his debut in 2009 he had missed just four games, one of which was enforced.

The Highlanders were sailing along nicely among the competition’s frontrunners, until the ghosts of the previous season threatened to reappear after a below-par performance in the round-13 loss to the Lions in Johannesburg. A few drinks in a closed session at the hotel led to an impromptu excursion to a nightclub. The partygoers had agreed to return by team curfew, but things got physical when one player, prompted by teammates to leave, refused. The altercation escalated into a clash on the dancefloor, a bloody nose and a cracked lip. At a team disciplinary meeting the next day...