The Waratahs must have wondered what they were wandering into as they sauntered through Invercargill airport.  It’s the first time the New South Wales Super 14 franchise has played here and their initial impression might have been that they should have packed flippers and snorkels along with the usual rugby accoutrements of hair product and cellphones as they flew in over flooded Taramoa farmland.

Any advance intelligence would have been equally brown.

Drew Mitchell, now a Waratah, was a member of the Queensland Reds team which risked hypothermia when the Super rugby season kicked off here in 2004.

The theatric-sounding Rupert Guiness, of the Sydney Morning Herald, this week described Invercargill as “one of the bleakest cities in the world”.

The Waratahs, reading dangerously like some sort of protected species, would be playing in a stadium which was “renowned for an atmosphere of intensity and hostility” against a Highlanders team full of Southlanders who were “far better acclimatised to the usual cold and wet weather of Invercargill”, Guiness wrote.

Cold and wet, yes.

You’d almost think it was winter. The Southland Times can also report that it will be dark. Happens at night time.

Just how much time Southlanders have spent contemplating tonight’s game is questionable.

There’s still a weathered eye being kept on the banks of most rivers after a nervous week of wet and tomorrow is many men’s version of Christmas morning.

When it comes to rugby, there’s the inevitable feeling that the public is really just holding its breath for the Ranfurly Shield defences to arrive.

Ticket sales have been as slow as opening morning when the ducks aren’t landing.

While it’s the home team coach’s job to talk up the opposition, Rugby Southland have been doing it instead in an effort to get the till ringing.

And the Waratahs do have a handy team.

Injuries have left them vulnerable in the front row and that could be where the Highlanders will probe, but the backline has names in it and the Waratahs are led by flanker Phil Waugh, a player New Zealanders respect.

Most New Zealanders, however, don’t fully trust the Waratahs, a team which often wins the Super 14 in March, despite the competition ending in May.

This edition could be different. Steve Walsh might have helped hand them a win over the Brumbies last week, but they deserve to be just one point outside of the top four having developed a relentless game based around recycling the ball and wearing down the opposition.

Win tonight and the Waratahs could get an elevator ride up the standings with all four teams above them facing tougher assignments this weekend.

Like any number of mallard and paradise ducks tomorrow, the Highlanders are viewing the world from the choked end of a 12 gauge barrel.

They are in danger of being the worst Highlanders team in the history of professional rugby, a position they shouldn’t be in given the talent which is available in the team. The Highlanders, who will have Mat Berquist at first five-eighth rather than Robbie Robinson after the pair were bracketed together earlier in the week, are unlikely to get the same attacking license from the Waratahs they were allowed by the Hurricanes last week, where tackling went out of fashion for 40 minutes or so. But there was evidence against the Hurricanes that the Highlanders are a better team when they relax and don’t worry about the pressures which inevitably come to bear on sides that don’t win.