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I was lucky to attend Suncorp Stadium on Saturday when the Queensland Reds rewarded a vocal crowd of around 12,000 faithful supporters by defeating the Super Rugby runners-up for the previous two years, the Lions.
Nobody expected the win by this young Queensland side against such capable opposition. However, by the way many rugby followers from Queensland and elsewhere in Australia were carrying on, the Reds might have had a chance had Queensland coach Brad Thorn not left former fly half Quade Cooper off the team.
In the last week or two even Australian rugby luminaries such as Tim Horan and Alan Jones have publicly opined that Thorn is getting it all wrong in leaving the prodigal son out of the Reds. After all, Quade has been the Reds for to a lot of people for the last decade, and nobody had got around to thinking of a plan B for when 30-year-old eventually retires or when a new coach, like Thorn, had different ideas about what he wanted from his ten.
Hence trying a couple of new fly halves and running up against a few hurdles appears like a catastrophe for the Reds and has led to the panicked calls for Quade’s return from a couple of people who should know better.
As it turns out, this group of eminent rugby personalities have ended up with egg on their faces. Thorn, arguably the greatest dual code rugby footballer ever, did absorb some useful ideas about coaching while ensconced for two decades in the winning cultures of the 1990s and 2000s Brisbane Broncos, the Queensland rugby league team, the Kangaroos, the Canterbury Crusaders and the All Blacks.
(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
That said, I am sure that Horan and Jones, who just seem keen for Australian rugby to get back to the glory days of when they were directly involved in the game, would be happy to concede the point that Thorn might know what he is doing.
I am not so sure about the motivations of the noisy hordes of Queensland rugby dilettantes who are currently having a collective hissy fit about Quade’s exclusion. It seems to me that this mob like the Reds when they win but liked it even more when Quade did fancy Harlem Globetrotters-esque tricks with the ball, hence their disappointment that the Reds have notched up a decent win playing ‘rugby’ without Quadey – it reduces the chance of him being recalled.
I use the parentheses around the name of the game for the benefit of the dilettantes, so that they don’t get their football codes mixed up. I think these folk may have ‘rugby’ mixed up another game that involves more kicking and jumping. I suspect that a lot of them took a wrong turn trying to get to the Gabba in 2011 and accidentally ended up at Suncorp while Quade was playing at his most entertaining and never left.
Until the Reds next lose a game I am not expecting to hear much from the ping pong rugby crowd apart from the occasional mutterings about how the Reds losing a game with Quade is more entertaining than unexpectedly beating the Lions. Then when there is a loss, the whingers will gleefully take to the internet to let us all know that Thorn was wrong all along.
(Jono Searle/Getty Images)
But you know what? I don’t really care about the whingers, because my team won today playing rugby. You know, the code where we have the glorious 21-year-old, 135-kilogram Tongan called ‘Thor’ who can outrun the entire team over ten metres and make hardened South African looseheads reconsider their life choices come scrum time.
Rugby, where we can replace substitute Thor and his loosehead with identical twins called The Smiths, who make the opposing front row think that they have been hit so hard by Thor that they are seeing double.
Rugby, where we have replaced brittle defenders at fly half with steely-eyed, chiselled-jawed lads from Toowoomba called Hamish, who put in 13 bone-rattling tackles during a game and still managed to stride up the middle of the park to set their team up for a try.
It’s rugby, and if you don’t like it, go and find another code of football that it less physical and more aerial. There are enough Queenslanders who love rugby for what it is and want their team to win.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.