LONG READ Jamie Joseph could lead the Highlanders to the promised land and himself to the All Blacks job

It is now ten years since the Highlanders achieved their one and only Super Rugby triumph, overturning the odds by defeating the favoured Hurricanes at their ‘Cake-Tin’ fortress in Wellington. New Zealand’s habitual underdogs won 21-14 in the 2015 final.

Their coach in that game was uncompromising ex-All Black loose forward Jamie Joseph, and the same man has returned to his old stomping grounds in the current iteration of Super Rugby Pacific. It is as if Joseph was made to mentor the understated and underestimated; the teams who have it all to prove, the little guys, those who tend to be regarded as rugby’s equivalent of collateral damage.

After leading the Highlanders to Super Rugby success, Joseph moved on to coach quite literally the smallest top-tier nation in international rugby at the 2019 World Cup. Under his auspices, the Brave Blossoms reached the quarter-finals of that tournament for the first time in their history, before bowing out to eventual winners South Africa. A brief fling with the ill-fated Sunwolves Super Rugby franchise asterisked his time with the Japanese national side, before the circle closed with a reunion with his first love in the South Island.

Scott Robertson’s recruitment of no fewer than three sitting Super Rugby Pacific head coaches to his first All Blacks coaching panel opened up space for a return home of the wild geese; for men enriched by their experiences overseas, such as Vern Cotter at the Blues and Joseph in Dunedin.

Razor’s appointment also broke the padlock of previous succession planning, where a head coach inevitably handed the baton on to one of his assistants who had been groomed for the job. There are no more closed shops now, and men such as Cotter and Joseph can realistically hope to climb to the summit and the top job in the country again.

Joseph’s homecoming was as natural as it gets. If you split him in half, you would find the Otago colours of navy blue and gold inside. He learned his trade at the local university, he played for Otago, and his family was raised and educated in Dunedin.

One year as the nominal head of rugby, blindfolded and feeling his way around in the dark allies of administrative red tape, was enough. Joseph is now back where he belongs, donning the tracksuit and out in the fresh air of the training paddock.

The Highlanders were ripe for a Joseph makeover. They only won six of their 14 games in 2024 and were being targeted as an easy-beat. Traditionally, the franchise has always had a smaller catchment area than the other four franchises in the lower part of the South Island, so ‘Moneyball’-type pick-ups at the unheralded end of the market are at a premium.

Joseph and the man he replaced as head coach [Clarke Dermody] badly needed to unearth the ‘sleepers’ in a market where clubs are identifying and contracting promising young talent far earlier, and Super Rugby squad sizes have increased significantly from the comparable level ten years ago.

The battle for talent has never been fiercer, and Joseph has not been helped by an enormous haemorrhage of players from the Highlanders squad over the past two years, ranging from ‘old dependables’ such as Marty Banks, Scott Gregory, Mitch Hunt, Josh Dickson and Josh Bekhuis; to men mentioned in distant All Black dispatches, Jermaine Ainsley, Pari Pari Parkinson, Billy Harmon and Marino Mikaele-Tu’u; to players of established All Black stature in Aaron Smith and Shannon Frizell.

Nothing epitomized the trauma of the blood-letting as well as the loss of not only ‘Nugget’ Smith – for so long the best scrum-half on planet rugby – but the man who had been painstakingly groomed to replace him, Te Toiroa Tahuriorangi, at one and the same time. It is hard to come back from that, but the ride to redemption via recruitment is already under way.

Back in 2015, Joseph had a workmanlike pack of forwards, and an outstanding set of backs quite capable of trading blows with the likes of Beauden Barrett, Ma’a Nonu, Conrad Smith, Julian Savea and Nehe Milner-Skudder in that grand final.

The stars may just be starting to align once again, and the timing for another improbable tilt at the title could be ripe: for Josh Hohneck, Nasi Manu, and Ash and Elliot Dixon up front, read star prop Ethan De Groot, veteran ex-Crusader Mitch Dunshea and young Dutch tyro Fabian Holland. For ‘Nugget’, Ben Smith, Waisake Naholo and Malakai Fekitoa behind, read Taine Robinson, Jacob Ratumaitavuki-Kneepkens; Caleb Tangitau and the two Jona[h]’s on the left edge, Lowe and Nareki; a young sensation in Finn Hurley at the back. Sewing it all together, the massive physical and psychological bedrock of Timoci Tavatavanawai in the middle.

Joseph and Dermody have done their due diligence, they have made their Moneyball calls and they are in the process of discovering they are right. They have a typical Highlanders team of potentially high quality on their hands. The transformation of Tavatavanawai from a powerful, if one-dimensional bullocking wing with Moana Pasifika to a quality ‘triple threat’ first five-eighth and team leader in the South Island exemplifies the change. It has to be seen, to be fully believed.

Hurley and Tangitau may have provided most of the attacking pyrotechnics against the Blues, but it was Tavatavanawai who was the main man when the game was on the line, with prop Dan Lienert-Brown off the field on a red card for the final 23 minutes. ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’ the saying goes, and Timoci is already proving he belongs in the company of the new super-sized breed of world-class inside centres which includes Bundee Aki, Jonathan Danty, Damian de Allende, Levani Botia and Andre ‘the Giant’ Esterhuizen.

Tavatavanawai is one of the new Monsters of the Midway, and you quickly learn to give them a wide berth. He has the forward-type size and power to do the basic ball-carrying duties in heavy traffic as well as the fabulous five above, as he amply proved playing against his new club for Moana Pasifika.

The revelation so far this season has been the length and intelligence of his kicking game, which is superior to all the other members of the quintet bar Esterhuizen. This 50/22 in the first round against the Waratahs was no fluke.

The massive morale boost for the Highlanders after they went down to 14 men was sparked by a quickfire sequence of breakdown pilfer, followed by a tapped penalty and a 50/22 from the boot of the big man.

Once again, of the phenomenal five only Esterhuizen would have been capable of conceiving and executing all three actions, one after another.

The primary feature that group has in common is all are expert ‘jackals’ after the tackle – as good as a David Pocock or George Smith, as good as any true-blue number seven in his prime.

Just like fellow Fijian Botia [who has played international rugby at both seven and 12], Timoci could probably operate as efficiently in the back-row as he does at 12. Towards the end of the game, he got the chance as a number eight at the base of the Landers’ undermanned scrum.

Joseph has done his share of the heavy lifting in his coaching career. He knows how to pull a team wilting under the disregarded underdog label up by its bootlaces and, in two of three cases at least, how to make it a contender.

He understands what it takes to meld a group of disparate personalities, often from very different cultural backgrounds, together under one umbrella with a single sense of purpose. The Highlanders recruitment drive after a gush of departures has been nothing short of outstanding, and the new group has all the successful Highlander hallmarks: tough and tenacious up front, a colourful, effusive balloon of youthful talent behind.

The man in the middle pulling front and back together is a Fijian converted from wing to second five-eighth, Timoci Tavatavanawai. He has already revealed hitherto dormant or unsuspected abilities which will make him a contender for the national side at 12, and that will do no harm to Joseph’s credentials as a future coach of the All Blacks. As Sir John Kirwan explained on an old edition of Sky Sport’s The Breakdown:

“I think Jamie has the potential to be an All Blacks coach – and the next All Blacks coach. He’s ambitious and I think he’s always been ambitious. [He] has had his [overseas] experience, he’s coming home and I think it’s great.”

Kirwan added a jocular, patronising pat on the head for his interlocutor Jeff Wilson: “I’m pleased for your Highlanders, because you need something, son.” There could be no better reply than Joseph’s own words, “You get lucky as a coach, sometimes you are blessed with just the right timing, you know?”