Highlanders 7
They came to Hamilton as head-hunters but the Highlanders will have left as head-cases.
A few of them should be mad with rage at the way they so lamely let this game drift away from them
Basic skill execution was the problem - the Highlanders dropping more ball in one
game than they have all season.
The Chiefs may well use victory to cling on to the belief they are still a playoff shout - that's just the ramblings a franchise trying to persuade its meagre support to turn up.
Their victory did nothing more than damage the Highlanders' campaign. In the final wash-up, this loss might be the one that rankles. The Highlanders just didn't give themselves a chance by playing so poorly.
For the first time this season, they looked like the Highlanders of old and now they face an enormous test of character to see if they can bounce back, keep their campaign on track.
They have talked about their improved culture, their trust and belief in one another and all that will be examined now. It will be up to the senior figures to rally the troops and really, no one epitomises the spirit of the Highlanders better than Jimmy Cowan. At one stage, referee Garratt Williamson pleaded with Jamie Mackintosh to help him locate Cowan's off switch. Cowan's running commentary on where Williamson was going wrong didn't find an appreciative audience. That's Cowan, though - volatile, passionate and direct. His forwards love him - his is a voice they can trust and it was apparent, just as the hooter went for halftime, that the Highlanders pack are more than a little protective of their spiritual leader.
Cowan, as can happen with a flammable personality, found himself exchanging blows with Hika Elliot (a reasonably combustible character himself) and it was all on. There weren't any shots fired out in the open but by the time the bodies lifted from the pile, Adam Thomson was prostrate on the turf, a flow of claret decorating his face.
That he didn't emerge in the second half was due to the nasty looking position he was crunched into in the next play - his neck getting caught under his body as the Chiefs piled in.
With Jerome Kaino having limped off the night before, the All Black coaches will be starting to wonder whether they are cursed or whether it is inevitable in a longer competition that men like Thomson who get stuck in are going to be dinged.
The tension that led to the scrap involving Cowan was a direct result of the frustration both sides were obviously feeling. Neither team could build any rhythm or momentum. There was some terrible passing, some clumsy handling and more positively decidedly good counter rucking that led to the game bouncing between the two 22s without anyone really threatening other than Jason Rutledge's early try.
It was tired looking rugby - the sort you could maybe accept at this stage of the competition where the initial energy is fading and a few weeks yet until the squeaky bum stuff.
Not that either coach accepted that as an excuse. The Chiefs closed out on account of talking their chances. They didn't play particularly well or accurately - they just had more composure for longer periods.
They found the physicality they needed in the second half and did enough. Coach Ian Foster was relatively pleased - when you are rooted to the basement, a win is a win is a win.
Maybe it will launch them into one of their usual late runs, but that seems unlikely. The cohesion and quality weren't really there - they scraped home by being marginally less inaccurate than the Highlanders which is not a raging endorsement.
"That was our worst performance of the season in terms of execution," said Highlanders coach Jamie Joseph.
What the Highlanders will need to remember is that for all the hard work, for all that they have achieved so far, it could still come to nothing.
They need wins and to get them, they have to have a quality of performance. This was way down on the effort they produced to sink the Crusaders.
The energy wasn't in evidence and they let the Chiefs keep the ball for too long in the second half.
Lima Sopoaga will have learned plenty from the experience. His running game was superb - he danced and weaved, made a glorious break and then threw a magnificent long pass to create Rutledge's try. But his kickoffs were sloppy and his tactical reading of the game was questionable.
Chiefs 20 (B. Leonard, L. Messam tries; S. Donald 2 pens, con; T. Nanai-Williams con) Highlanders 7 (J. Rutledge tries; R. Robinson con). HT: 6-7.
