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Reds tick a handy first box in 2018

12th February, 2018
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Reds fans celebrate after the Round 7 Super Rugby match between the Queensland Reds and the Highlanders at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Saturday, April 9, 2016. (AAP Image/Glenn Hunt)
Expert
12th February, 2018
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Speaking with the four Australian Super Rugby CEOs last week was an interesting and insightful exercise on number of fronts, and reaction to the two articles were many and varied, and equally insightful from the supporter’s perspective.

A large number of you commented on the fact that while the Brumbies’ Michael Thomson, the Rebels’ Baden Stephenson, and the Waratahs’ Andrew Hore went into great depth about how their sides are reconnecting with the community and the support and membership base, the Reds’ Richard Barker offered shorter, sharper responses. These responses confirmed the Reds as an organisation were approaching 2018 much the same way new coach Brad Thorn is: by saying as little as possible, and letting results be the barometer.

While I can understand the Reds’ thinking, and even what might be motivating their desire to keep their head down, bum up, and just get on with things, I also tend to agree with the train of thought that this feels like a bold strategy. At a time when rugby in Australia needs to show it is moving on from a tumultuous 2017, and that things are improving in 2018, I’m not entirely sure that keeping a low media profile among six other professional football teams in Queensland is the way I’d go myself. And that’s not to totally ignore the rising profile of professional and semi-pro women’s sporting teams in the state, either.

With all that said, the Reds making it through to the semi-finals of the Brisbane Tens on the weekend is an important first box for 2018 ticked. Over a weekend when Super Rugby regular starters were few and far between, Queensland emerging as the best of the Australian sides says something about the players in the Reds wider training squad, and even on the fringe of it trying to get in.

It also, perhaps most importantly, says something about Thorn’s ability to bring together a squad like this and turn them into one of the best four teams of the weekend.

Jono Lance

(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

Of course, familiarity helps. Of Thorn’s 26-man squad for the Tens, 16 of them were in his Queensland Country NRC squad just a few months ago. 11 of them played in the NRC Final on November 11. And going back a bit further than that, seven players in the Tens squad on the weekend played for Thorn during the 2017 Super-20s tournament last March and April. And, of course, he was part of the Reds coaching staff last season anyway, so it’s not as if he wouldn’t have known the rest of the players anyway.

One thing we could glean from the weekend was that the Reds do look fit. Whether that’s the right kind of fitness to last up to eighty minutes a week for six months will be revealed soon enough, but they certainly had no issue playing multiple blocks of twenty minutes over the two days. Obviously, a 26-man squad means that some guys played only one game a day, and interchange benches mean that no-one really played all twenty minutes in a game anyway. But the Reds didn’t look off the pace, and that’s important at the start of a season.

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Additionally, the Reds look to be playing with pace this year, which is something Brumbies coach Dan McKellar made mention had been a focus of theirs over the summer, and which all four Australian sides will undoubtedly need in 2018.

The Reds had a definite acceleration about them whenever they entered the attacking half on the weekend, and with players making concerted efforts to stay alive in attack and present as options for the man with the ball. It’s a small thing to notice – and it’s in a ten-a-side game, granted – but it’s an important instinct that has to start somewhere and develop over time.

Could it mean Izaia Perese is unleashed at fullback this year, to cover for the sudden Karmichael Hunt-shaped hole in the side? Perese is a devastating hole runner, and he certainly enjoyed the space on offer over the weekend. And he’s keen to try no.15, for what it’s worth, telling Jim Tucker in The Courier Mail over the weekend, “I’d love to give fullback a good crack because you can attack both sides (of the field), just roam around and do whatever you like.”

I’ll be surprised if it happens, but it’s not the craziest idea ever uttered before Round 1 of a new season.

Defensively, the Reds learned their lessons from Day 1, and looked much better for the run on Day 2. This will ultimately be where Thorn’s ‘hard work and no shortcuts’ mantra is judged. Day 2 was when defence mattered most, and the Reds were much improved. That’s another small, but not insignificant win for a young squad.

And perhaps even more importantly, the Suncorp Stadium crowd did get behind the Reds through the weekend. Amidst all the noise about ‘never going back’ and ‘not watching this mob’, the noise grew behind the young Reds as the weekend went on.

The Queensland jerseys had plenty of competition from New Zealand strips of great variety, of Fijian flags and jerseys and shirts that wouldn’t look out of place in Hawaii, and even from Panasonic Wild Knights supporters, but the Reds’ support was always there.

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Super Rugby Fans Reds Highlanders 2016

(AAP Image/Glenn Hunt)

This is maybe the biggest win of the weekend. Richard Barker made it pretty clear last week that the strategy for 2018 was to play well, win games, and the rest will take care of itself. The pro-Reds crowd on the weekend shows that this risky strategy can reap rewards.

Now once again, this was a pre-season, ten-a-side event played two weeks out from the first games of 2018 for the Super Rugby teams on show – and I say ‘teams’ in the logos-on-the-jersey sense, rather than actual playing personnel.

Just as the Melbourne Rebels squad for the Tens looked almost nothing like the squad that played the Brumbies in their first trial last weekend, the Tens squads will bear little resemblance to those that take the field for final trial games this week.

So, no, you can’t read too much into a Tens result. All the proof you need for that is look at who held the Brisbane Tens trophy aloft for 2018!

But the encouraging showing from the Reds, to go further than any other Australian side did, means that selling their first home game on March 2 against the Brumbies is already going to be easier than it was a week ago.

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Fans have seen a bit more of Hamish Stewart in a Reds jersey, of Perese in space, of Taniela Tupou carnage from short range. They’ve already got more of an idea of how the Reds want to play than they did last weekend.

And that’s definitely a box ticked for 2018.

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