'I'm almost in tears': Lima Sopoaga's 'best Jamie Joseph story'

Highlanders head coach Jamie Joseph may not have found the success he was looking for in his first season back in Dunedin after eight years in Japan, but the coach has a track record of righting leaky ships.

The coach inherited a Highlanders outfit fresh off an 11th-placed finish in 2010, and improved the squad steadily to the point where they became champions in 2015.

One of the players who was at the forefront of that title run was former All Blacks and Manu Samoa playmaker Lima Sopoaga. The Shimizu Blue Sharks’ first five-eighth came through the ranks under Joseph’s leadership, and it wasn’t always smooth sailing between the two.

Speaking with his old friend and fellow former All Black Israel Dagg, Sopoaga couldn’t help but laugh when reminiscing on a particularly brutal lesson he was taught more than a decade ago.

“Bro, I’ll never forget. This is probably my best Jamie Jo story,” he started, telling Scotty and Izzy on SportNation.

“We played a preseason game in Auckland against the Blues, and obviously, we’re a bunch of young dudes, so there’s me, Nug (Aaron Smith), Telusa Veainu, Buxton Popoali’i and a few other young dudes.

“And we just think ‘oh, who cares? Let’s just play,’ so we’re doing chip and chases out of our 22, running it from our in-goal, getting turned over and then the Blues would get it, penalty, kick to the corner, maul, try. And so we’re down, but we don’t really care.

“We get to Monday training and we get absolutely blasted in the review; not respecting the forwards, not respecting the ball. Anyway, we get to Tuesday training, and we’ve had a hard session, done contact for like two hours, and then he (Joseph) named these players, and it’s me, Buxton, Nuggy and a couple of others; us young boys.

“He made us do live mauls against the whole forward pack! From the 22 to the try line. And, if the forward went easy, they were getting it, and so the forwards were full on smoking us. And he’s just at the back, just yelling at us like ‘get your head in there!’ and stuff like that.

“I’m almost in tears. (Andrew Hore) at the start is really giving it to us, and after about 10 minutes, he’s like ‘come on boys, you can keep doing it, keep going, keep going’.

“Then (Joseph) blows the whistle, and as soon as he blows the whistle, I just walk off, I just went for a big walk, and he’s calling my name. I’m like no, I’m not turning around and walked off ike a little sook.

“Honestly, that was like the worst experience of my life. Live mauls? Against the whole forward pack? There was only five of us!”