'Change that narrative': Otago coach pinpoints season's 'turning point'

After a lengthy dry spell, Otago are finally back in the NPC final, having found their rhythm in a revelatory 2025 season.

The Ranfurly Shield holders are on a seven-game unbeaten run, and have been gathering momentum after starting their season two from four.

The Dunedin-based club have now earned a chance to claim their third NPC title, and their first since 1998, in Saturday’s final against Canterbury, and the fact that it’s been a long while between drinks isn’t lost on the playing group.

Having finished with a winning record just once since 2020, the club’s recent struggles grew into something of a mental hurdle that needed to be overcome. But in rugby, like any sport, winning is an effective remedy for any ailment.

Otago head coach Mark Brown said restoring belief was a “key point” for his squad this season.

“At the start of the year, we spoke about those things as a group,” he told Sport Nation. “Across the board, if you talk to people who play Otago, they’ll say ‘they’re battlers, and you’ve got to stick at it for 80 minutes to beat them, and they punch above their weight’. But they say those things in a way that if you do those things, you’ll invariably get them and get the result.

“We wanted to change that narrative. I knew what we had at our disposal, and in our coaching group, we were pretty excited with what we had, and I think it was time to just not settle for second-best, or not settle for excuses.

“We had a team that was good enough to play this Saturday, and we started from day one, installing that belief. But that doesn’t happen overnight.

“Stag Day’s a big occasion, and to go down there and kick off the season in a positive way, that was a real kickstart. You can’t underestimate the importance of that.

“We were a little bit ordinary against Hawkes Bay, but we only just lost, and it was a game we shelled, really. I think the boys took a wee bit of belief out of that, because they’re a good team.

“And then it was probably the Tasman game, which was a pretty emotionally charged night, and we lost on the final play of the game. Reflecting on that game, that was probably the turning point where everyone started to realise that maybe we weren’t just saying these words, that we could actually live them.

“From there, the belief’s just grown, and they’re a really well-connected group.”