I’ve never met Rod Macqueen but he and I are members of an exclusive club: we both attended the first Super Rugby matches of both the Brumbies and the Rebels. Living in Canberra between 1996 and 2003, I was lucky enough to see almost every home game the Brumbies played.
Watching Stephen Larkham and George Smith develop into extraordinary players was a privilege.
Having moved to Melbourne in 2004 and waited for top-level rugby to follow me, I missed just one match this year. (Luckily Andy Irvine lived up to his folk music legend status.) And I saw all their away games on tv, so now is the time to offer these thoughts on the Rebels’ first year:
The club did good job establishing themselves in Melbourne. Business and professional acquaintances tell me they successfully tapped into business networks. Hard work was done by Macqueen and Stirling Mortlock as the faces of the club.
Home matches were well attended. There were lots of expatriate South Africans, New Zealanders, British, Irish, New South Welshfolk and Queenslanders, as well Victorians who had never been to a game of rugby (The program for the trials helpfully included an explanation of the rules.)
AAMI Stadium is a fabulous venue. Spectators are close to the action, and the design makes crowd support reverberate.
The Rebel Army was a great asset, creating something of an overseas sporting experience to Australia.
Starting in a World Cup year hurt the Rebels’ recruitment. Understandably, few established Australian players were willing to move to a new team if that was likely to affect their selection chances. The team was forced to recruit too many old or second-string players.
The team’s performance on the field was fair. Like the last two additions (the Force and Cheetahs), they struggled in their first year. The problem was that their three wins came surprisingly early, creating unrealistic expectations among supporters and, I think, the team.
By the end of the season their enthusiasm had waned significantly and even the players who had sparkled earlier looked off key.
Extraordinarily for a Macqueen-coached team, the Rebels’ defence was dismal all season.
After the trial match against the Crusaders, I thought the team was going to struggle because of a lack of speed. That hurt them a little in attack but it was a big problem in defence as too many inside defenders failed to be in position when an opponent stepped back.
The team was also poor at slowing down the opponents’ ball: many of the tries they conceded came from incredibly quick ruck ball, preventing the Rebels from resetting their defence.
There were also a few individuals who need to work on technique or positioning: Cooper Vuna, for example, was eager but made a startling number of misjudgements about when to come out of the line.
Injuries affected team cohesion, and was more of an issue for a new team than well-established ones. Injuries were relatively few among the forwards. but in no two consecutive matches did the same backline start. This hindered attack and, even more so, defence.
Tomorrow, a look at the individual players.
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