Opinion
The Brumbies’ opening round of a very new and exciting Super Rugby Pacific campaign was held against the Western Force.
Through a narrow and perhaps lucky escape against the Force I personally had a few speculations on how the Brumbies are going to shape throughout their upcoming matches.
The first aspect that I would like to report on would be the rocky performance when it came to their set-piece, mainly alluding to the line outs and scrums. The Brumbies are usually notorious for their devastating work in the line outs and setting up for tries with their powerful rolling mauls but this form wasn’t replicated last weekend.
A potential reason for this was due to a strong performance by Izack Rodda, who mounted lots of pressure in the line outs, causing the Brumbies to lose four of their line outs to the Force’s two line outs lost, with the Force also winning more line outs than the Brumbies, ten to nine.
This performance in the line out forced Brumbies head coach Dan McKeller to make a quick starting rotation between the two starting hookers Folau Fainga’a and Lachlan Lonergan.
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The next part I would like to talk about was the early match performance in the scrum. Even though the Brumbies hadn’t lost a scrum all game we didn’t look to apply enough pressure on the opposing forward pack to display the right amount of dominance to keep the opposition totally out of the game.
Due to this, the Brumbies were put on the back foot, while the Force played very well, constantly mounting pressure near the Brumbies’ line.
With a very powerful and experienced front row revolving around James Slipper and Allan Aaalatoa, the Brumbies’ starting forward squad only has two players yet to be capped for the Wallabies – Rory Scott, who is sure to make an appearance soon with the form he has been in, and Cadeyrn Neville, who only missed out on a place in the Wallabies squad due to injury.
This class forward pack arguably should have had more of an edge on the Force. Still, kudos to them for picking a good fight and mostly having the edge over the Brumbies throughout the entire game.
I’m expecting some more changes to be done before the Brumbies face the Fijian Drua, who I am expecting to come to Canberra ready to play with their exciting, skillful and physical Fijian flair after a rough loss to the Waratahs.
I am very excited for this new evolution of Super Rugby and fully prepared to see what it brings to the sport as a whole.
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