{"id":172549,"date":"2025-06-10T09:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T09:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/172549\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T09:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T09:05:11","slug":"lima-sopoagas-best-jamie-joseph-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/172549\/","title":{"rendered":"Lima Sopoaga’s ‘best Jamie Joseph story’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Highlanders head coach Jamie Joseph<\/a> may not have found the success he was looking for in his first season back in Dunedin after eight years in Japan, but the coach has a track record of righting leaky ships.<\/p>\n

The coach inherited a Highlanders<\/a> outfit fresh off an 11th-placed finish in 2010, and improved the squad steadily to the point where they became champions in 2015.<\/p>\n

One of the players who was at the forefront of that title run was former All Blacks<\/a> and Manu Samoa<\/a> playmaker Lima Sopoaga. The Shimizu Blue Sharks\u2019 first five-eighth came through the ranks under Joseph\u2019s leadership, and it wasn\u2019t always smooth sailing between the two.<\/p>\n

Speaking with his old friend and fellow former All Black Israel Dagg<\/a>, Sopoaga couldn\u2019t help but laugh when reminiscing on a particularly brutal lesson he was taught more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cBro, I\u2019ll never forget. This is probably my best Jamie Jo story,\u201d he started, telling Scotty and Izzy on SportNation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe played a preseason game in Auckland<\/a> against the Blues, and obviously, we\u2019re a bunch of young dudes, so there\u2019s me, Nug (Aaron Smith), Telusa Veainu<\/a>, Buxton Popoali\u2019i and a few other young dudes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we just think \u2018oh, who cares? Let\u2019s just play,\u2019 so we\u2019re doing chip and chases out of our 22, running it from our in-goal, getting turned over and then the Blues<\/a> would get it, penalty, kick to the corner, maul, try. And so we\u2019re down, but we don\u2019t really care.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get to Monday training and we get absolutely blasted in the review; not respecting the forwards, not respecting the ball. Anyway, we get to Tuesday training, and we\u2019ve had a hard session, done contact for like two hours, and then he (Joseph) named these players, and it\u2019s me, Buxton, Nuggy and a couple of others; us young boys.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe made us do live mauls against the whole forward pack! From the 22 to the try line. And, if the forward went easy, they were getting it, and so the forwards were full on smoking us. And he\u2019s just at the back, just yelling at us like \u2018get your head in there!\u2019 and stuff like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m almost in tears. (Andrew Hore) at the start is really giving it to us, and after about 10 minutes, he\u2019s like \u2018come on boys, you can keep doing it, keep going, keep going\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen (Joseph) blows the whistle, and as soon as he blows the whistle, I just walk off, I just went for a big walk, and he\u2019s calling my name. I\u2019m like no, I\u2019m not turning around and walked off ike a little sook.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, that was like the worst experience of my life. Live mauls? Against the whole forward pack? There was only five of us!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Highlanders head coach Jamie Joseph may not have found the success he was looking for in his first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-172549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114658274443648744","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}