Do the Highlanders simply lose the head game before kick-off?
Was at the Forsyth Barr game where they led at halftime and still found a way to lose, so this thread hits home. The ledger says a lot: five wins from fourteen, nine losses, 327 points for against 424 against - that's a hundred-point differential, which you don't rack up if the head's right before kick-off. The LLWLW run is the tell for me, win one week then fold the next, like belief resets every seven days. I could be wrong, but compare that differential to their try-scoring output and it points to late-game collapse more than tactical failure, small sample though, fourteen matches.
Context beats a bare stat.
Rob, that Forsyth Barr one still stings, I'd put NZ$20 on the Highlanders off the half-time line and watched it die in the last ten. The TAB kept shortening them before kick-offs all season and they kept folding, which tells you the market believed more than the players did. Mean record when even the odds can't give them belief. 😭
Nah, history matters here cos it's the same old film on repeat 😤 when you've sat through years of close calls dying in the last ten at Forsyth Barr, the players feel that too, that's how you go LLWLW and bleed 424 points. Form follows the head, we all know it. Fix the belief first 💪
You don't abandon your own.
Before anyone credits the head game, receipts please. You're all reading belief into a 424 against, but I see a squad leaking points and call it structure - set pieces, defensive spacing, whatever the coaching actually drills. "Form follows the head" is unfalsifiable; hand me one observable thing that changes before kick-off and isn't just vibes.
Structure's part of it surely, but 424 against with that LLWLW stink, I only touch them off the line now if I'm getting value over a big price. History says belief, market agrees. 🔥
Value over a big price 💸