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.
Sebastian Horn
Roar Rookie
Hello, Cameron thanks for your article. The Force has looked to have improved a lot during the offseason. This can not only be seen throughout tough performance against the Brumbies but also their dominating performance against the Rebels. I will not be surprised if the Force upset a couple of the New Zealand teams. Furthermore, it is the start of the season for the Brumbies they should be given some slack, and although the scorline displayed otherwise the Force was never really on top throughout the game and at no point did they deserve to win that game.
Zander Hoskin
Roar Rookie
Great article, I think the Brumbies and the Australian teams as a whole (minus the rebels) are looking really good this year.
Tim J
Roar Rookie
Thank you for the article Cameron, much appreciated. Round 1 games are always littered with errors with all sides, the Brumbies will be better for the hit out. A much improved effort will be coming in game 2, with more consistency and better execution,
Doctordbx
Roar Rookie
Train Without A Station
Roar Guru
Force are probably better this year too. Plus they are always a competitive team even when they have seasons where they do struggle to convert that into wins. So a narrow win against them doesn’t mean a team will struggle.
Short Arm
Roar Rookie
Rodda should've been MoM. I wouldn't put too much weight on players having Wallaby caps especially with McKellar in the Wallaby setup. The forwards were shown up by non-wallaby Force pack.
Bobby
Roar Rookie
Brumbies will be better today as were the Reds and Tahs last night. The possession favoured the Force partly due to FF (who has been rightly dropped out of the 23). Tackling stat’s heavily in favour of Force. But, as often is the case, Brumbies got the W.
DJ
Roar Rookie
It was a slow start to the season and I think they’ll be better for the hit out. Looking forward to seeing Jahrome Brown coming back of the bench today. I don’t think Folau was hooked early either, I remember him staying on until the second half. For how much dropped ball we had, and how much attacking ball they had, the Force never really managed to capitalise.