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The much discussed third tier competition in Australia has kicked off with Brisbane City hosting the Sydney Stars at Ballymore in Brisbane.
The NRC replaces the ARC which burned brightly for one season in 2007 before the competition was cancelled by the ARU due to a loss of over $5 million.
The early response from the public in Brisbane was very positive with an engaged crowd of 3,400 showing their appreciation for a good standard of rugby despite some heavy rain during the match.
Brisbane will go in to the history books as winners of the first match in the new competition with a comprehensive 45-20 victory.
The match featured ten tries and the new laws being trialed certainly seemed to encourage a much faster game. Under existing laws the score would have been 40-20 but five eight point converted tries to Brisbane made a difference.
Brisbane went into the match underprepared having only had one team training run before the match due to a large number of players participating in the club rugby grand final last Sunday, but they made a strong start with a couple of driving mauls before Michael Hodge from the Stars had to be replaced due to concussion suffered as he tried to tackle the hard charging Samuel Kerevi.
But it didn’t take long for Sydney to get into the game either with a couple of breaks out wide before Henry Clunies-Ross scored the first try of the competition in the left corner.
Nick Frisby then set up Brisbane’s first try when he made something from nothing before giving a flick pass to Toby White who scored under the posts for the first ever eight point try.
Sydney scored four tries in the first half with Sam Quinn, James Dargaville and Jim Stewart joining Clunies-Ross on the score sheet.
Brisbane hit back with a try to Kuridrani after a fortuitous intercept from Pettowa Paraka late in the half and with the try converted Brisbane narrowed the gap to 20-16 for the Stars at half time.
Early in the second half Brisbane took the lead with a second try to White before some great counter attack and another clean break from Kerevi saw Jake McIntyre in for Brisbane’s fourth try.
Kuridrani scored his second try of the match and Brisbane’s fifth with twenty minutes remaining and not long after it was ‘Harry-Badger’ aka Harry Parker scoring Brisbane’s sixth try.
The rain continued to get heavier during the match and the handling of both teams suffered but they still both moved the ball around with plenty of intent.
Sydney dominated the scrums in the first half of the match where it really did look like men against boys with Jeremy Tilse and Paddy Ryan looking a class above the young front row for Brisbane. To their credit Brisbane improved their scrumaging as the game went on and finished even with Sydney in this area.
Brisbane’s defence through the mid-field looked a little brittle but improved in the second half and Sydney were unable to score any points after half time.
Peter Betham looked dangerous in the first half making a number of line breaks but Brisbane did a good job of containing him in the second half.
We saw Kerevi dominate for the Reds late in the Super Rugby season and he continued that form tonight proving the difference in the match and deservedly winning the man of the match award.
Overall it was a good start to the new competition and this sort of rugby is likely to attract more people to the game if we continue to see rugby of this quality.