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Yeah it's pretty ridiculous to say we had the 11th best scrum last year. Greg Holmes single-handedly worked his way back into the Wallabies for the 2015 RC and then the RWC on the back of the 11th best scrum? We had the strongest scrum in the competition last year, certainly the strongest...

Well, there were three nominally independent members of the panel so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. One area Stiles clearly does qualify for HC is in team culture, which is possibly the single biggest attribute a HC can bring to a team, and what RG just couldn't do. My biggest...

It was interesting to see Tupou on the wing in defence. Not often you see a THP fielding bombs then running it back in broken play splitting the line. He's definitely the real deal. He gave Brothers' scrum the edge, always looked threatening ball in hand, scored a brilliant try and made...

Sounds like the rumours of an extensive search of the Ballymore car park were correct, then. Still, it could work. Stiles to HC and retaining scrum coach, Thorn forwards/LO coach, MOC to the Force and a new backs/defence coach appointed and Quade running the backline. Doesn't solve any of...

(I should point out that I am not robbing the Reds - I still PAY for the same grade of seat. I just refuse to sit on the 22 if there are 90% empty seats on halfway)

Well the interesting thing is, in 2013/14 I didn't have this problem, and that's when the Reds were getting over 20,000 (genuine) fans per game. I was able to get seats on halfway even booking the morning of a game. I've confirmed this with my old ticket receipts in my e-mail to make sure my...

23% is an even worse win-loss record than we had under Graham. Now THAT is something to be worried about. I don't know where these crowd figures are coming from but I'm getting pretty pissed off that whenever I've been to a game this season all the best seats on the centre line have been...

That's a nicely prescient article, in hindsight. Concludes with: How can it be good for the Reds team that he is replaced as coach by someone who has no record of success at the Super Rugby level? There is a strong case in all of this for asserting that personal agendas are fracturing the...

Yeah I don't know what happened. Not enough focus on cardio during the off-season and too much ground to make up? Too much set piece practice? Too much effort expended in the first 60 of each game? I crunched the numbers a few weeks back, the Reds got absolutely flogged in the last quarter on...

In our defence, two of those losses were by 2 points and one was by 3 points. For Reds fans, those games practically count as wins. When you're as terrible as we are, near enough is good enough. In fact if you apply that metric we won the Blues game as well. So that's four extra wins. Total...

I don't hate to say it at all, I absolutely want a Kiwi backs coach. They are playing much smarter than we are currently. We're a little outmatched in our forwards but we're comprehensively outmatched in our backs. I don't expect us to play like the Chiefs but I do expect us to have the basic...

Who took charge of the defensive coach role once RG went? Judging from results, nobody! Same with the kicking coach. And I know they regained their conditioning coach but he's obviously struggled to make an impact this season too. I assume that Brad Thorn would be stepping up in general...

What I love about him is when he gets tackled and the player is hanging off him, and he's still making metres, legs pumping like pistons. His first touch against the Brumbies, it was Scott Sio hanging off him - hardly a little bloke himself. And yet Tupou kept charging forward, dragging Sio...

Stiles is the lesser of the two home-grown evils for sure. Particularly if MOC being passed over results in his heading to the Force, and requires the Reds to get a new backs coach.

Come on Cheik - give Gill a run in the Rugby Championship! Those stats speak for themselves.

I'm just watching the replay after being at the game last night and I think that despite the fact Duncan P made a few big errors at critical times, his running game looks VERY good compared to McIntyre. In his line break just after half time he palmed off Debreczeni and Jones - when's the last...

The other thing you have to consider about 2009 is they were building off a very low base and nobody was expecting the Reds to be filling Suncorp. By 2014, attendances were falling in line with the position on the ladder, and Carmichael as CEO would have been under pressure to reverse that...

McMahon is the same size as Hooper though, and Hooper is regularly one of our best players at test level. So it can't just be size. I reckon it's just that Hooper is a runner while McMahon's game is about thumping people. When you step up to test level, Hooper can still out-run people (in fact...

I'd be interested to know how much of this is Cordingley's doing and how much is Carmichael's. Carmichael had a marketer's approach to recruitment, he seemed to be more focused on big-name signings as a way to get bums on seats to try to turn around the QRU's financial situation - guys like JOC (James O'Connor)...

The problem is, it's very hard to judge any individual backline player in this poor team. Particularly wingers who just aren't getting the space they need. Nabuli has made some powerful breaks during the season and set up some great tries, which is something not many Reds players can claim. I...