Anton Lienert-Brown during his 100th game for the Chiefs. Photo: Photosport
The Chiefs held off the Highlanders' challenge for a 52-28 win in their Super Rugby Pacific game in Dunedin on Friday night.
The visitors scored seven tries in a victory which extended their unbeaten run to 10 games and opened a big gap at the top of the competition table.
For the home side the loss leaves them in eighth place before the rest of games in the round are played and likely be leapfrogged by the Rebels, Force or Drua if any of those teams win this weekend. After three tough losses in a row the southerners will need to battle in every remaining round to stay in playoff contention.
The Highlanders did score first against the competition front-runners when Ethan de Groot got over the line in the sixth minute but the Chiefs responded with three tries in the space of seven minutes to swing momentum in their favour.
The Chiefs were ahead 28-14 at half-time.
Damian McKenzie was in commanding form once the Chiefs got their hands on the ball, while fullback Shaun Stevenson was threatening too.
But the pick of the backs was the unheralded Daniel Rona, who picked up two second half tries and was very effective getting the ball where it needed to go.
With the conversion of Rona's second try McKenzie went past 1000 career points for the Chiefs - on a night where he was perfect off the tee, nailing all eight of his goal kicks.
For the Highlanders fullback Sam Gilbert, who was also accurate off the kicking tee, was again very good, as was Thomas Umaga-Jensen, but really they had no answer to the very powerful Chiefs once they got rolling.
Read how the game unfolded here.