And how did the coaching staff keep ahead of the game?
Those questions and many more were put to Highlanders’ head coach Jamie Joseph in an enlightening Q & A session at the Club Otago lunch staged in mid-August.
Jamie was candid as he looked back on the 2015 year, how the team and staff emerged from a very dark time of it after the dismal 2013 campaign, and how he was moulded as a coach, a man and a father by two influential coaches in their own right Laurie Mains and Gordon Hunter.
An audience of 260 in the Dunedin Town Hall thoroughly enjoyed Jamie’s honesty and his humility – and his continued joy in seeing highlights of the pulsating final against the Hurricanes in Wellington, the final two minutes of which he watched from the side-line before being swamped by the players as the realisation of the occasion hit home.