Melbourne Rebels hit new heights to beat Highlanders in Dunedin

The Rebels produced their best performance of the season to defeat the Highlanders in Dunedin.

Rebels five-eighth Matt Toomua looks to pass under pressure against the Highlanders in Dunedin. Picture: AAP

Matt Philip earned himself a place in Melbourne Rebels folklore as he soared high to steal a lineout to thwart a last desperate rally by the Highlanders as an Australian side triumphed for the second weekend in a row on New Zealand soil in Super Rugby.

Last weekend, it was the Brumbies who outshone the Chiefs in Hamilton. This week it was the Rebels who produced easily their best performance of the season to defeat the Highlanders 28-22 at Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium.

Dave Wessels’ side crossed the Tasman with their season balanced on a knife-edge. They had beaten the Waratahs but then had lost all the big moments as they went down to the Sharks at home. Another loss might have been their undoing but instead the entire Rebels team lifted, utterly dominating the home side in the set pieces, outkicking them and looking way more organised throughout.

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Perhaps they could have, should have won by more, but this was the first defeat suffered by the South Islanders to an Australian side since they lost to the Western Force in 2014. Besides, when Scott Gregory scored after nine phases and then Josh Ioane kicked a crunch penalty goal in the last quarter, it seemed the Highlanders were about to steal another win over an Australian team, just as they had done over the Brumbies in Canberra on February 15.

Matt Toomua, missing with injury against the Sharks, returned to brilliantly direct the Melbourne players around the field from five-eighth, while Dane Haylett-Petty played a captain’s knock at fullback, his courageous determination to win the high ball twice resulting in yellow cards to the Highlanders wingers, Gregory and Jona Nareki, as they took him out in the air.

Debutant Gideon Koegelenberg was masterly in the lineouts, while the entire front row of Matt Gibbon, Anaru Rangi and Jermaine Ainsley dominated the scrums, but really it is churlish to single out Rebels players. They all performed.

The Rebels came to Dunedin vowing to take their lead from the Brumbies who last week shocked the previously unbeaten Chiefs and that is precisely how the Melbourne side started the match.

Points flowed at the rate of one a minute for the first quarter as the Rebels ran rampant, pressuring the Highlanders at every turn, indeed even winning the kick-off back from them.

It looked a little ominous when the Rebels had nothing to show for absolute domination across the first seven minutes – four and a half of which were spent inside the home side’s 22m zone – but it was not surprising that their general, Toomua, took matters into his own hand.

Bursting through the line, as he was often to do, he unloaded a sympathetic pass to centre Billy Meakes who stepped his way to within a metre of the line before he was driven over by his forwards for the opening try.

Barely had the Highlanders absorbed that blow than another landed.

The Rebels had faked to go to the lineout drive in the build-up to Meakes’ try so the Highlanders weren’t going to be fooled twice. But it was the double bluff as the Melbourne pack quickly formed up on the jumper and propelled hooker Rangi over the line for a well-deserved try.

It scarcely needed to be said that the Highlanders would strike back and they were in the act of doing that very thing when the ball went loose out wide.

Instantly right winger Andrew Kellaway swooped on the ball and eyed the far corner post, some 80m away. Few gave him any chance of beating Highlanders speedster Nareki but then Kellaway was regarded as a speed-burner in his younger days and he showed glimpses of his pace as he raced away to score.

Kellaway was still attempting to catch his breath after play restarted when he was isolated in the tackle and the Highlanders poured through, eventually creating room for Josh McKay to score on the far wing.

At 21-7, the Rebels would have been pleased with their work in the first half but then the home side scored the unlikeliest of tries as hooker Ash Dixon unloaded brilliantly to tighthead prop Siate Tokolahi, who in turn offloaded to second-rower Jesse Parete before Aaron Smith loomed to break the unlikely sequence as he dived over for the try, right on halftime.

It was hardly a fair reflection on the relative merits of the two sides but it was Kellaway who restored the two-try advantage when he scored his second intercept try of the night. Customarily, intercept tries are regarded as pure luck but not on this occasion.

The Rebels were applying such pressure through their line speed that they were within centimetres of half a dozen intercepts.