The Highlanders stunned the Waratahs 26-19 in a Super Rugby comeback win in Dunedin on Saturday night, but coach Jamie Joseph has been left asking at what cost?
The side's two openside flankers, Shane Christie and John Hardie, are both nursing injuries and unlikely to play this Friday night against the unbeaten Hurricanes in Dunedin.
Joseph says the downside of the game is they lost some valuable players.
"We lost a player in the warm-up with Shane Christie re-tweaking his hamstring and how bad that is we don't really know but it obviously wasn't good enough to take the field.
"John Hardie dislocated an ankle, so that's a really big loss for us as a team.
"Those two guys are both openside flankers and are both key players for us and look to be out of contention for, in John's case in particular, quite some time," he said.
The Highlanders have won three of their first four games and sit fifth in the overall standings on 14 points, with the Hurricanes second on 18 points.
