Hurricanes struggled to find top gear : Hore

Hurricanes captain Andrew Hore said his players struggled to find top gear in their opening 9-14 Super rugby loss and Nonu’s departure sealed their fate.

“You’re trying to play a game with 14 men for 40 minutes and you keep making mistakes — you’re never going to win a game really are you?” he said.

“It was a bit of first game stuff, a bit of pressure, a couple of new guys, we didn’t click too well and they sort of lived off our mistakes and we made plenty of them.”

Hore expressed frustration that the Hurricanes’ attempts to instill discipline this season had failed so early.

“It’s something we’ve been trying to work on and obviously we’ve made it hard for ourselves now,” he said.

His Highlanders counterpart, Jamie Mackintosh, said his side had been written off before the match but the strategy of denying Wellington’s back line opportunities had paid off.

“It’s just great for my boys to get off to a start like this,” he told AFP.

“For our confidence, we needed that, not many people gave us a chance.”

“We certainly made hard work of it in the second half, our lineout fell to pieces a bit and we should have closed that game out when Ma’a got sent off, but it was character-building I suppose.”