The Super Coach On His Way To Help Japan Get Over Eddie Jones
Jamie Joseph is leaving the Highlanders at the end of the year to coach Japan’s Brave Blossoms. He has huge boots to fill, taking over from the team’s inspirational former leader Eddie Jones. As Scotty Stevenson reports, he’s up for the challenge.
He takes up a lot of space, Jamie Joseph, he absorbs the light. It’s his persona more than his physical size, though there’s a relationship between the two. Once upon a time he was the enforcer of the All Blacks loose forward trio. Today he is the no-nonsense coach of the Highlanders. He stands tall, shoulders back, chin up, but there’s nothing overtly threatening about his demeanour. He’s just a proud man, with the laid back confidence of a bloke not to be screwed around with.
It is the Highlanders’ annual awards evening. He is suited, booted, at ease in a room full of players and partners and coaches and sponsors. In two days his team will meet the Chiefs at Forsyth Barr Stadium – the glass house, the green house, or the toast rack, depending on who you talk to – with the New Zealand Super Rugby conference title on the line. Most of the players are standing around sucking back on a beer or two, which is entirely acceptable behaviour. It is Dunedin after all, the home of Speight’s, the land of “Good on ya mate.”
They’re a good bunch, the Highlanders, as frat house as a professional rugby team gets these days. They may have won the Super Rugby title last year but success has not altered their outlook on life. They enjoy each other’s company, share the same off-piste southern humour, rip the piss out of everyone. And have a beer. They also work hard, for their coach and for the team. There are no dull boys here. They work, and they play.
Assistant coach Tony Brown, who next year will step into the head coaching role, has a saying: “Beers taste better when you win.” This is a man who, famously, once had a Super Rugby final named for him – ‘The Party at Tony Brown’s Place’, they called it. The Crusaders crashed that party.
That was a long time ago now, last century even. It’s a different era now, a different game, but the hallmarks of those late-90’s Highlanders teams – chaotic collections of cult heroes and hard grafters, augmented by a handful of genuine rugby superstars – remain. The difference today is that, under Jamie Joseph, the Highlanders have found away to bottle the lightning.
It’s been six seasons since Jamie Joseph was appointed Highlanders coach. He walked into an organisation back in 2011 that had an awful lot of heart but very little soul. The team had been the whipping boys of Super Rugby for years. Good men, copping a beating. They worked out of a derelict gymnasium next to the University Oval and they felt like an afterthought.
Press conferences at the Highlanders were small affairs; a couple of local Newspaper men (well-worn, struggling for an angle) and, very occasionally, a network television crew would be about it. Their results matched the interest level from fans. Sporadic, would be one word to use. There were even calls to cut them from the competition.
Jamie Joseph walked into that environment. Marched in, really. He had told New Zealand Rugby that if they thought he was the best man for the job they should just appoint him rather than piss about with interview processes. He got the job. Then, almost immediately, he set about thrashing the living daylights out of his team. Within weeks of the new season, every story emanating from within the Highlanders camp was one of horror and pain and endless fitness sessions. There was a new sheriff in town. He wasn’t universally popular either.
Players who had been coached by Joseph in Wellington and who had heard the rumours about the new regime in Dunedin (the New Zealand player grapevine is nothing if not efficient) laughed among themselves – giggly, chuckling, evil, “could have warned you” laughs, too. Those who bore the brunt of Joseph’s new methods weren’t laughing. He said at the time that he needed the team to be fit. “You can’t win this competition unless you are conditioned to win the competition,” he told me once, many years ago.
It should not have come as a surprise that Joseph was demanding. He had been coached by Laurie Mains, the former All Black and All Blacks coach whose pre-Rugby World Cup training camp in 1995 is still spoken about with a mix of horror and awe by the men who were forced to endure it. They would train until they were near knackered and then came the three words none of them wanted to hear: “On the line.”
There was Mains, and there was Gordon Hunter, the one-eyed Dunedin detective who may be the most adored coach in Otago history, and there was Tony Gilbert, too. These are the men who turned Jamie Joseph into a player, made him “an Otago man” as he likes to call himself. These are the men upon whose foundations Jamie Joseph has built his own Highlanders empire.
There were hard lessons along the way. In 2013, his third season in charge, he ostensibly tried to buy a title. Andrew Hore returned home after falling out with Hurricanes coach Mark Hammett and with Hore came fellow All Blacks front-rower Tony Woodcock. Ma’a Nonu arrived, he too falling foul of Hammett’s Hurricanes clean out. All of a sudden the Highlanders were stacked with big name players.
I sat with Jamie Joseph at the start of that season, at a team building day at a rifle range (of course) and he said to me, “if we don’t make the playoffs, I will be very disappointed.” He would finish the season very disappointed, indeed. The move to bring in the big guns backfired spectacularly, but in a sense it did lay the ground work for what would become Joseph’s greatest contribution to the Highlanders: the transitioning from a team overly-reliant on home grown traditionalism to one that openly courted players from all over the country.
In 2014, with the open arms approach in action, there were signs the Highlanders were on the rise. Aaron Smith and Ben Smith had positioned themselves as the pillars of the side while others, such as Nasi Manu and Elliot Dixon, John Hardie and Joe Wheeler, were beginning to impose themselves on games. It was as if a little bit of Jamie Joseph has begun to rub off on the pack, which had always been willing but which was now becoming increasingly uncompromising.
The Highlanders began to get the results, finishing the regular season sixth and claiming the play off spot Joseph had wanted the year before. They travelled to Durban where they were defeated by the Sharks, 31-27. It wasn’t the fairy tale, but it was a long way from the nightmare. There was belief in the side borne of the fact that the Highlanders had been dubbed the ‘mongrel’ team of Super Rugby, a bagful of off-cuts and discards from other regions who had been drawn to Dunedin and who prided themselves on the “battler” tag.
“We don’t talk about battlers around here anymore,” Jamie Joseph told me the following season. “That’s not who we are.” We were sitting in the stands, under the roof of Forsyth Barr Stadium with the opening game of the 2015 season just one week away. Ox Eathorne, the erstwhile groundskeeper, was busy mowing the field. By the end of the season, the Highlanders would have been beaten on that field just twice, and would go on to defeat the Chiefs, Waratahs and Hurricanes in the finals series.
After the final in Wellington, after Elliot Dixon had scored a try by somehow running through the Hurricanes forward pack, after Marty Banks casually slotted a late dropped goal, after Nasi Manu (“Nacho Nacho Man” they sung in his honour) had lifted the trophy, Jamie Joseph sat quietly in an armchair on the mezzanine floor of the Intercontinental Hotel in Wellington while the team celebrations reverberated around the room. He sipped on a glass of champagne, and stabbed a fork at pieces of plump orange kina in a punnet on the coffee table in front of him.
A year later, Jamie Joseph is standing in front of his team presenting a giant claymore sword to hooker Ash Dixon who has just been named “Highlander Man”. It is the club’s highest honour, and goes, says Jamie, “not necessarily to the best player in the team, but to the player who best personifies the values of the team.” That’s the whole thing about the Highlanders under Jamie Joseph – they have the world’s best halfback, and arguably the world’s best fullback, and all the awards are instead won by a veteran hooker who has had limited starts, and an unfashionable Otago utility back called Matt Faddes who is playing his debut season.
Faddes is the latest in a long line of unfashionable Highlanders backs – a line that can be traced back through the Richard Buckmans and Phil Burleighs to the Boof Laneys and Tony Browns. Somehow the Highlanders is that one team where these players get to shine.
“They’re a great bunch of boys aren’t they Sumo,” Jamie says to me after the formalities are over, and after he has said what will be the first of a lot of long goodbyes. It’s a statement of fact rather than a question. They are a great bunch of boys. I ask him if he will miss them when he leaves at the end of the season to take the Japan national team job.
“I’ll be back mate,” is his response. “Dunedin is home now.”
Japan is a home away from home, though. Joseph first played in Japan in 1995, a willing participant in the first real wave of New Zealand players – Richard Turner and Kevin Schuler were notable others — to take professional contracts in Japanese Corporate Rugby. Joseph never lost his connection with Japan and has been back every year to fulfil obligations to the Sanix Blues club. he knows it will be challenging.
“I like the challenge though,” he says. “I loved the challenge of coming here [to the Highlanders] when I did, and there will be similar challenges in Japan. It is a different way of doing business there but there will have to be changes, and I’m keen to make them.”
The Highlanders will head back to the playoffs next week for the third straight season. Their final regular season game against the Chiefs is a sell out. It is the club’s second regular season sell out of the year. It is the first time that has ever happened. Under Jamie Joseph’s stewardship, the Highlanders have won a title, promoted six players to the national side, and become one of the most admired teams in Super Rugby. How does that happen?
Roger Clark, the club CEO, has the answer. “A while back, when various candidates for assistant coaching roles were put before Jamie, he looked at one and immediately said no,” says Clark.
“I asked him why not and he said, ‘There is only room for one bull in this china shop, and that bull is me.’”
Comments on RugbyPass
Pot Kettle, the English and French teams have done it for years.
19 Go to commentsHas virtually played every minute of previous games. Back row of Li Lo Willie , Grace and Blackadder would be the 1. Crusaders issue is a very average 1st 5 who cannot run. Kicking in general play is also below par They need to put Yong Kemara in. He must have so.e talent for them to bring him down from Waikato. Hoehepa would struggle to play in so.e club sided
4 Go to commentsI hope this a good thing making all these changes!
2 Go to commentsThe Hurricanes are good, especially with a decent coach now. However, let’s be real, the Crusaders and Chiefs are clearly a good degree weaker without the players they’ve lost overseas now. The Canes lost one player. It’s also why the aussie teams ‘seem’ to be stronger.
9 Go to commentsOr you could develop your own players instead of constantly taking from the SH competition and weakening it in the process? With all the player and financial resources these unions have compared to SH countries you’d think they could manage that, or is weakening the SH comps and their national sides an added bonus? Probably.
3 Go to commentsNot so fast Aaron, we might need you in black yet lol. God knows he’d be a lot less nerve-racking than hot and (very) cold players like Perofeta. It’s really a shame Reuben Love isn’t playing 10, we’ve got enough 15 options.
4 Go to commentsAnd those from the NH still seem to be puzzled (and delighted) why NZ’s depth isn’t what it once was. Over 600 NZ players overseas, that’s insane. This sort of deal is why Super Rugby coaches have admitted they struggle now to find enough quality to fill out their squads.
6 Go to commentsArticle intéressant ! La question devrait régulièrement se poser pour les jeunes français originaires de Nouvelle-Calédonie, Wallis-et-Futuna et de Polynésie entre la Nouvelle-Zélande et la Métropole… Difficile pour la fédération française de rugby de se positionner : soit le choix est fait de dénicher les jeunes talents et de les faire venir très tôt en Métropole, au risque de les déraciner, soit on prend le risque de se les faire “piller” par les All Blacks qui, telle une araignée, essaye de récupérer tous les talents des îles du Pacifique… À la France de se défendre en développant l’aura du XV de France et des clubs français dans ses collectivités d’Outre-mer !
3 Go to commentsWrong bay. He needs to come to the REAL BAY which is Bay Of Plenty and have a crack at making the Chiefs.
3 Go to commentsIs Barrett going play full back??? They already have all the centers…
15 Go to commentsForgive my ignorance, I might not fully understand so would appreciate clarification: Didn’t the Bulls have to fly with three different carriers, paid for by the South African Rugby Union, whilst Edinburgh got a chartered flight sponsored by EPCR? Also, as far as I understand it South African teams don’t yet share in the revenue from the competition and are not allowed to host Semi-finals or Finals at home. Surely if everyone wants South Africans to “take the competition seriously” then they must make South Africans feel welcome, allow them to share in the revenue, and give them the same levels of access as the teams from the other countries. Just a reminder that South Africa has a large and passionate Rugby audience. Just by virtue of our teams being a part of these competitions means that more of us are likely to watch the knockout games, even if our teams haven’t qualified. It would be silly to alienate such a large audience by making them feel unwelcome.
19 Go to commentsFirst of all. This guy is very much behind the curve. All the bleating, whingeing, whining and moaning took place days ago already. Not adding anything to the topic other than more bleating, whingeing, whining and moaning. 🍼 Second of all, not one mention of the fact that South African teams can’t get home semi finals or finals. The tournament was undermined and devalued by the administrators. 🤡 Thirdly, football teams often have to juggle selections in mid week games, premier games, champions league games etc. and will from time to time prioritize certain titles over others. 🐒 And lastly FEK Neil, and anyone else for that matter, for insisting on telling teams how to manage themselves. If they make what is largely a business decision that suits them and doesn’t suit you - tough shite. 💩 It’s not rocket science as to why the Bulls did what they did. If this guy is too slow to figure it out (and is deliberately not mentioning one of the key reasons why) then he isn’t a journalist. He should join the rest of us pundit plebs in comments section. 🥴
19 Go to commentsSo the first door to knock on Rob is Parliament followed by HMRC. The Irish Revenue deliver a 40% tax relief rebate on the HIGHEST EARNING TEN YEARS of every pro Irish rugby players contract earnings at retirement. That goes a long way to both retaining their best talent and freeing up wages for marquee players. Who knows, if that had been in place in the UK, you might not have been able to poach Hoggy and Jonny Gray from Glasgow…!!!
3 Go to comments1. True, if that “free” ticket means access to all but the prized exhibit - EVIP only. SA cannot host semis, even if they’ve earned it (see Sharks vs ASM Clermont Auvergne at… Twickenham Stoop). 2. Why no selective outrage over Lyon doing the exact same thing a week earlier? Out of all the countries France send the most “B teams”, why nobody talking about “disrespect” and “prioritising domestic leagues” and “kicking them out”? 3. Why no mention of the Sharks fielding all of their Springboks for the second rate Challenge cup QF? No commitment? 4. Why no mention of all the SA teams qualifying for respective euro knock out comps in the two seasons they’ve been in it? How many euro teams have qualified for KO’s in their history? Can’t compete? 5. Why no mention of SA teams beating French and English giants La Rochelle and Saracens? How many euro teams have done that in their history? Add no quality? The fact is that SA teams are only in their second season in europe, with no status and a fraction of the resources. Since joining the URC, SA has seen a repatriation of a number of players, and this will only grow once SA start sharing in the profits of competing in these comps, meaning bigger squads with greater depth and quality, meaning they don’t have to prioritise comps as they have to now - they don’t have imports from Pacifica and South America and everywhere else in between like “European” teams have - also less “Saffas” in Prem and T14, that’s what we want right? 'If the South Africans are in, they need to be all in' True, and we have to ensure we give them the same status and resources as we give everyone else to do just that. A small compromise on scheduling will go a long way in avoiding these situations, but guess what, France and England wont compromise on scheduling because they ironically… prioritise their domestic comps, go figure!
19 Go to commentsthe success of the premiership can be summarized by : only 10 teams. It makes a huge difference with the overcrowded top 14 (let us not talk about Leinster and URC…)
1 Go to commentsGood for him. The ABs were fooling around again with converted fullbacks that had a penetration of a marshmallow. Laumape or as Aki has shown for Ireland, go forward is important in the centres. If it had been DMac - Aki- Aumua - Ioane- Telea- Jordan in France the final result would have been different.
4 Go to commentsDan Carter a apporté son professionnalisme, des méthodes de travail, un esprit qui manquaient à l’USAP. Son influence, même une fois blessé a été énorme. Et pour citer une anecdote, certains soirs il venait de lui-même à l’entraînement des jeunes pour dispenser ses conseils. On ne peut pas compter ce qu’il a apporté au club en heures de jeu sur le terrain. Est-ce que le club en a eu pour son argent ? Avec la publicité sur son nom et le titre, je suppose que oui.
1 Go to commentsThe SA sides are suffering from a bum rap here. There isn’t a side anywhere in the world that would do things differently in their shoes. They’ve been set up to fail in the EPCR comps by vested interests, with last minute intercontinental travel requirements that costs an arm and a leg to book in advance just on the possibility they might be required. And the total nonsense that denies any chance of home venues is entirely biased and absolutely unsporting. Either EPCR, the Top14 & the Gallagher Premiership get it sorted on a fair and equitable sporting basis for ALL participants or expect the ridicule to continue. Right now, these comps are a joke!
19 Go to commentsSA sides should do the right thing and leave the champions cup, they are lowering the standard with completely one sided games, not up to the right level. The greatest club tournament in the world is being banjaxed by the weak SA sides.
19 Go to commentsCouldnt agree more. SA sides need to show more committment and really have a go at the Champions Cup. Its quite possibly the most prestigious title in Europe and SA sides need to respect that prestige and serve up their best. EPCR needs to do more to ensure that sides from South Africa and sides travelling to and from SA have a better chance in this competition. The Bulls were put in a really difficult position of having to travel there and back in one week. One could argue that this is what the SA sides signed up for and that La Rochelle didnt complain or send out weakened sides despite having to travel to SA and back and play on successive weekends but surely the situation is also unfair on La Rochelle as well and so EPCR needs to think about successive gameweeks and the travel effect of the competition
19 Go to comments