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Highlanders unveil new coaching structure for Tony Brown's arrival

Tony Brown of the Highlanders. (Photo by Rob Jefferies/Getty Images)

Tony Brown is likely to be co-coach with Aaron Mauger next year as the Highlanders begin what they have described as a new era.

Brown, 44, has a reputation as one of the sharpest rugby minds in the game, and has been the architect of many new and effective attacking plays in recent years. Known as a staunchly parochial southern man, he is looking forward to another term with the Highlanders.

“As most people would know, the Highlanders are a very special team to me and the opportunity to be involved again is too good to turn down. They are a great team to coach, they play positive footy and next year they have some exciting new talent coming through that I believe I can help develop to the next level,” Brown said.

He first helped coach the franchise in 2014 and then moved into the head coaching role in 2017 for one year. He has coached the Sunwolves this year, and is also assistant coach of the Japanese national team with former Highlanders coach Jamie Joseph. His exact coaching role is yet to be finalised but he is regarded as one of the best attacking coaches in the game and is bound to be involved in that department.

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Mauger will be in the final year of his three-year contract next year and said in a statement he was looking forward to Brown joining the club.

“His passion for our club and his rugby intellect will no doubt have a massive influence on our growth over the next few years and beyond.

“Although there is a great deal of excitement around the future of the club, the team of 2019 are solely focused on finishing this campaign well. Once the season is finished, we will do an extensive review of our programme and our coaching set-up, as we do every season, and the coaching roles and responsibilities for 2020 will be discussed and finalised post that,” Mauger said.

Highlanders chief executive Roger Clark was enthusiastic about the appointment.

“Tony is an exceptional coach and to have his talents available to us again is exciting.

“It would be fair to say that next year we will be embarking on a new era without some of our better-known players from recent times,” he said.

The Highlanders have retained a core group of 23 players from this year’s campaign for 2020, including All Blacks Aaron Smith and Liam Coltman, and will look to complete selections shortly.

New players will be named in the coming weeks and after this season finishes.

This article first appeared on nzherald.co.nz and is republished with permission here.

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Flankly 1 hour ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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