Dominic George: High on the Highlanders if they win

We're unashamedly Highlanders fans here at Farming Show HQ

In 1999, I was 21 and recovering from a drinking accident. I'd shattered my ankle after falling off a two-storey industrial building into an open skip. The recovery was long and arduous and my way of coping was to drink more. Clearly, like many young men, I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed and the frontal lobe hadn't quite evolved to the point where I could make rational decisions. Some would argue it's still evolving or stagnant.

I had turned into a deeply cynical, bitter young man with a growing chip on my shoulder. It ended my rugby playing days as well; I hesitate to call it a "career", because it wasn't, even though at the time I believed the sport was being robbed of one of its great practitioners. Unlike some, time hasn't embellished my footy days, but merely crystallised it into what it was. Fair to middling, a bit-rep player who hated training but loved the game. End of story.

So I'm hobbling and swaying my way through 1999 when the Otago Highlanders made the Super Rugby final, Super 12 back then. It wasn't inconceivable that this would be the case; they'd made the semifinals the year before, the core of the squad was made up of the championship-winning Otago NPC team of 1998 and they'd gone to Newlands and defeated the Stormers in the semifinal.

The Highlanders included players such as Oliver, Meeuws, Hoeft, Randell, Kelleher, Wilson, Laney and, of course, the team's current assistant coach, Tony Brown. At the time, there was a TV ad campaign for AMI centred on a theme of "Party at Kelly Brown's". Some marketing types (this pastime was becoming an academic subject at the time, ha) decided to leverage this and bill the final as "Party at Tony Brown's". For every person who bought into it, my cynicism grew to where I even contemplated not going to the match.

But I'd hated Canterbury rugby since I was a foetus and wanted to exact some sort of fan revenge on the ferals who'd caused us such misery in that ill-fated "Hand-of-Latta" Ranfurly Shield match in Christchurch five years earlier.

Suffice to say, it all went to script; close, but ultimately no cigar for the southern men. Little did any of us know at the time, it would be the last occasion the city of Dunedin would host a knockout match in Super Rugby, until now.

They're not exactly southern men these days. The Authority on Everything, aka The Wife, says she can't identify with the team like she used to in those halcyon days as the players come from all parts of the country now. Coming from good Central Otago farming stock, she, like many others, took some sort of pride in the perception the players represented the place they lived in and the people who lived there.

I don't have the time or inclination to argue with her (I'd lose anyway). But probably more than any other rugby region, Otago, via the university, attracted players from all parts of the country in the amateur era. Plus we had an excellent "working relationship" with Hawke's Bay, whereby we'd entice some of their finest rugby talent down south and give them the privilege of doing so in return. The difference is they ended up assimilating into the community quickly and were adopted accordingly.

This group is plying its trade in a different era -- it's professional sport, you go and work for whoever's willing to pay for your services. However, it must be noted the current players, whether by design or accident, have endeared themselves to the locals in many ways. Part of it is having former Otago players Brown and Jamie Joseph at the helm, part of it is the way they play the game and part of it is having the talismanic phenom Ben Smith, a local lad, as skipper. But in reality, most of it is because they're winning.

We're unashamedly Highlanders fans here at Farming Show HQ -- I just hope it's not another 16 years before we host a finals match again. If they live to fight another day, the Highlanders will be the toast of town -- let's just hope the frontal lobe has developed to the extent I don't end up in hospital again.