Drua v Rebels @ Sunshine Coast Stadium 7.45pm AEDT, Friday 04/03

[Rebel man]

We had some hope when Quade and Will were here and started the season really well but then went down in a massive heap.

Worst thing about tonight was we were 14-0 up, let them score right on half time when we had an extra man advantage (and lost).

Yeah those two years we lost the final game and missed the finals

 

[Scooter]

Yeah those two years we lost the final game and missed the finals

Then we had to wait until a last minute converted try to final make Super Rugby AU Finals.

 

[Rebel man]

Then we had to wait until a last minute converted try to final make Super Rugby AU Finals.

Yeah that was a low point, being a Rebels fan is a form of self harm

 

[Rugbynutter39]

We had some hope when Quade and Will were here and started the season really well but then went down in a massive heap.

Worst thing about tonight was we were 14-0 up, let them score right on half time when we had an extra man advantage (and lost).

Turinui summed it up saying yes injuries and probably 3-4 players not super rugby players but in having a professional program for some time that was a game they should win ever day of the week.

Rebels have some talent coming through but continue to look like a team coming together for the first time every game, year on year. Foote should at maximum only be given this year to prove himself as rebels can’t afford another four years of shite as they had under Wessels (and his assistants, foote…etc)

 

[Rebel man]

Turinui summed it up saying yes injuries and probably 3-4 players not super rugby players but in having a professional program for some time that was a game they should win ever day of the week.

Rebels have some talent coming through but continue to look like a team coming together for the first time every game, year on year. Foote should at maximum only be given this year to prove himself as rebels can’t afford another four years of shite as they had under Wessels (and his assistants, foote…etc)

He has to go now 0-8 it’s not good enough

 

[PhilClinton]

If we have a full strength side he shouldn’t be in the starting side. It’s beyond me that he is captain

Mate judging by your comments about Wells and the Rebels in general, you sound like the worst sort of supporter.

I understand that emotional comments are part of the game, but your whole dialogue tonight has been awful.

 

[Dan54]

Watched until halftime lasy night and then wandered off to bed, just watched the rest, and have to say it going to be hard to get much support in Melbourne unless there is a huge improvement found somewhere in the team. The team almost looks directionless. With all due respect neither of the teams looked particularly super rugby standard last night. Maybe it was ground being wet and both teams being away from home?

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Mate judging by your comments about Wells and the Rebels in general, you sound like the worst sort of supporter.

I understand that emotional comments are part of the game, but your whole dialogue tonight has been awful.

I don’t know about that as I understand rebel man continues to watch them and goes to lot of rebels games, and yeh is pretty frustrated by them. In fairness given rebels under achieving since Wessels era vs roster I can understand that. The fact he cares and despite being frustrated continues to support them means to me he is probably a true fan as at least not deserted them (which a lot of oz rugby supporters have with super rugby performances eg tahs).

As rebels have some big issues to resolve as the gap between the rebels and 4 other oz rugby teams appears to be widening (now the tahs seems to be getting there act together). I guess what I am saying if you are a hard core supporter of your team like rebel man is he has more rights then anyone to bag them when continually under performing.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Watched until halftime lasy night and then wandered off to bed, just watched the rest, and have to say it going to be hard to get much support in Melbourne unless there is a huge improvement found somewhere in the team. The team almost looks directionless. With all due respect neither of the teams looked particularly super rugby standard last night. Maybe it was ground being wet and both teams being away from home?

Agree Dan - was like watching a club game cf very good quality rugby game got to watch of reds vs force.

 

[Rebel man]

Mate judging by your comments about Wells and the Rebels in general, you sound like the worst sort of supporter.

I understand that emotional comments are part of the game, but your whole dialogue tonight has been awful.

Mate he can come out every week and say “not good enough, no excuse and we will work hard and be better next week” but until they are better next week they are empty words

No disrespect to the Force and Drua here, but we started out with our best showing against the Reds, the Force while showing a lot of improvement and actually doing themselves proud still aren’t at the Reds level. So you go into the game against the Force at home and you think if the clean up a few things we are a good chance to win and our performance is far worse than the week before and we were never in the game we were made to look third rate.

We go into the game against the Drua and after taking a 14-0 lead we give up 31 points and only score 12. They always talk about pride and playing for the city but when it came to the crunch playing for Fiji meant something to the Drua they lifted and dominated the game and for the Rebels in the most part it was a lack of care and effort

I have seen this team go from getting crowds around the 20k mark consistently to now there would be lucky to get 4/5k there.

I went from buying one membership for myself to buying a second membership as I knew the club was going to take a massive hit through covid

Please tell me what I am supposed to be happy about? Their performance last night was disgraceful

I hope the women go out and show some heart this week and can set and example and show the men how to have some pride.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Mate he can come out every week and say “not good enough, no excuse and we will work hard and be better next week” but until they are better next week they are empty words

No disrespect to the Force and Drua here, but we started out with our best showing against the Reds, the Force while showing a lot of improvement and actually doing themselves proud still aren’t at the Reds level. So you go into the game against the Force at home and you think if the clean up a few things we are a good chance to win and our performance is far worse than the week before and we were never in the game we were made to look third rate.

We go into the game against the Drua and after taking a 14-0 lead we give up 31 points and only score 12. They always talk about pride and playing for the city but when it came to the crunch playing for Fiji meant something to the Drua they lifted and dominated the game and for the Rebels in the most part it was a lack of care and effort

I have seen this team go from getting crowds around the 20k mark consistently to now there would be lucky to get 4/5k there.

I went from buying one membership for myself to buying a second membership as I knew the club was going to take a massive hit through covid

Please tell me what I am supposed to be happy about? Their performance last night was disgraceful

I hope the women go out and show some heart this week and can set and example and show the men how to have some pride.

Yep I know how much support you provide to rebels rebel man. But in fairness I don’t think Phil Clinton was aware of this. I think given continued under performance vs roster gives rebels fans the right to expect better. To me it seems such a pity as commercially things going well for rebels as well as pathways with talent coming up. It just seems to me they have never got the quality coaches (or at least head coach) the rebels need and deserve. I think they need a coach like a Darren Coleman who can take a holistic approach to fixing the culture as well as the player / team cohension and skills . As seems to be bigger behind the scenes problems contributing to rebels continued on field under performance vs quality of roster. There was no excuse for the rebels to not win the game last night given as Turinui on stan commented on.

 

[TSR]

Amazed that Wells can be criticised for what he said after the game. Being honest is an issue now? In terms of his on field performance I would think he is the least of your problems. Certainly he appears to be busting his arse and he is generally a smart player and strong defender.

Rebels do have a pretty extensive injury list and don’t have the depth to be able to carry that so I do think it’s a bit unrealistic to think they’d be travelling well with so many out.

Having said that I think they are getting way too little out of the players that are playing. Some of the guys like Vaihu and Ripley that is excusable because they are rookies and need to be able to play off the senior players. But To'omua, Eloff, Orr, Hanson, Hodge (I know he didn’t play last night but was dreadful the first two weeks) have been really poor and it just gives them nothing to work from. Powell remains an honest trier and Philip I actually think has been good despite the rubbish around him. But he and Wells are two guys and they can’t make up for the rest.

Gordon might regret his move because it’s going to be hard to develop/kick on unless something changes.

 

[Rugbynutter39]

Amazed that Wells can be criticised for what he said after the game. Being honest is an issue now? In terms of his on field performance I would think he is the least of your problems. Certainly he appears to be busting his arse and he is generally a smart player and strong defender.

Rebels do have a pretty extensive injury list and don’t have the depth to be able to carry that so I do think it’s a bit unrealistic to think they’d be travelling well with so many out.

Having said that I think they are getting way too little out of the players that are playing. Some of the guys like Vaihu and Ripley that is excusable because they are rookies and need to be able to play off the senior players. But To'omua, Eloff, Orr, Hanson, Hodge (I know he didn’t play last night but was dreadful the first two weeks) have been really poor and it just gives them nothing to work from. Powell remains an honest trier and Philip I actually think has been good despite the rubbish around him. But he and Wells are two guys and they can’t make up for the rest.

Gordon might regret his move because it’s going to be hard to develop/kick on unless something changes.

Yep I don’t think anyone is criticising the youngsters like Ripley but rather some senior players (like ones you mentioned) not giving enough / standing up. But I do also take aim at the coaching as the lack of direction and cohesion in their play is something the coaches have to take a fair chunk of responsibility for. The rebels play like a team that just met up for the first time and yet have played that way for years.

 

[Rebel man]

Yep I know how much support you provide to rebels rebel man. But in fairness I don’t think Phil Clinton was aware of this. I think given continued under performance vs roster gives rebels fans the right to expect better. To me it seems such a pity as commercially things going well for rebels as well as pathways with talent coming up. It just seems to me they have never got the quality coaches (or at least head coach) the rebels need and deserve. I think they need a coach like a Darren Coleman who can take a holistic approach to fixing the culture as well as the player / team cohension and skills . As seems to be bigger behind the scenes problems contributing to rebels continued on field under performance vs quality of roster. There was no excuse for the rebels to not win the game last night given as Turinui on stan commented on.

I was so optimistic for this season, I felt finally we have got the business right off the field

I loved seeing the home grown lads coming through and yes on paper Isi, DHP and Marika leaving hurt. But the first two never played and we were never good enough to get the ball to Marika last year. I brought into the hype the club and Foote was selling about Gordon being ready to stand up at 10 then the axe him straight away

It’s getting harder and harder to get anyone to come to games with me even though I have paid for the seat already

 

[TSR]

I was so optimistic for this season, I felt finally we have got the business right off the field

I loved seeing the home grown lads coming through and yes on paper Isi, DHP and Marika leaving hurt. But the first two never played and we were never good enough to get the ball to Marika last year. I brought into the hype the club and Foote was selling about Gordon being ready to stand up at 10 then the axe him straight away

It’s getting harder and harder to get anyone to come to games with me even though I have paid for the seat already

Mate - I do feel your pain. Supporting the Reds over the last 20 years has come with lots of pain with the occasional bright spot. I’ve seen those years where injury killed us and learnt many times that there is an enormous difference between having a decent starting 15 and having a squad that can genuinely compete. We also got to live though a number of periods of sub standard coaching and star recruits who never really contributed like they should have. I’ve also had family in the past basically refuse to go to Reds games with me (as I write this I’m not sure which part of this is supposed to make you feel better).

If there is a bright spot in the Rebels situation it seems to be that there is some genuine traction in the Rebels providing a genuine pathway for some home grown talent, and that some of that talent is pretty damn good. That is a really important thing in the Australian rugby landscape if we are going to continue to support 5 teams.

Hopefully there is change soon enough to start the turn around. I’m not sure where it is going to come from but definitely needs to include a change that will get more out of the resources available.

For this season I do how we see some players back in the near future and some of the senior guys earn their pay check. I’ve been a big fan of To'omua so I find it a bit sad to watch him at present.

in the meantime - for what it’s worth - I think the majority of us sympathise greatly and take very little joy in the current plight you guys are in and genuinely hope for a turnaround (never at the expense of our teams, of course). The only advice I can offer is to grab some beers, or whatever your drink is of choice, and enjoy the game tonight for what it hopefully will be - a quality game between the perennial top dog in Australian Super rugby and the brash contender trying to prove they are the real deal. Whatever happens you can just enjoy it for what it is safe in the knowledge your team isn’t going to lose.

 

[BDA]

Drua are $6.50 for the win. Based on laat weeks game and looking at the team theyve named that looks like good value to me

I hope someone else got on this

 

[LearningCurve]

In the commentary last night I think that they mentioned that a Rebels bench player had just arrived from NZ and hadn't played rugby for 3 months. Not sure who they were referring to but I was surprised that they didn't have someone in Oz in their broader training group or linked to a Premier/Shute team to call on. Was this maybe because of the NZ borders just opening that delayed the guy arriving or have they just desperately looked to plug player holes due to injury?

 

[Silverado]

The biggest issue to me is the amount of quality players out injured. All teams are going to have a few and not put out their best 23, but Rebels virtually have a whole team out. Is it something wrong with the training or poor S&C? If there's not an influx of injured players returning in the next few weeks, then it's a lost cause and some questions to be answered

 

[Rebel man]

Amazed that Wells can be criticised for what he said after the game. Being honest is an issue now? In terms of his on field performance I would think he is the least of your problems. Certainly he appears to be busting his arse and he is generally a smart player and strong defender.

Rebels do have a pretty extensive injury list and don’t have the depth to be able to carry that so I do think it’s a bit unrealistic to think they’d be travelling well with so many out.

Having said that I think they are getting way too little out of the players that are playing. Some of the guys like Vaihu and Ripley that is excusable because they are rookies and need to be able to play off the senior players. But To'omua, Eloff, Orr, Hanson, Hodge (I know he didn’t play last night but was dreadful the first two weeks) have been really poor and it just gives them nothing to work from. Powell remains an honest trier and Philip I actually think has been good despite the rubbish around him. But he and Wells are two guys and they can’t make up for the rest.

Gordon might regret his move because it’s going to be hard to develop/kick on unless something changes.

Mate he promises a better performance every week and never delivers. For us fans the time for that talk ended after the reds game and we have done fuck all since

 

[Rebel man]

Mate - I do feel your pain. Supporting the Reds over the last 20 years has come with lots of pain with the occasional bright spot. I’ve seen those years where injury killed us and learnt many times that there is an enormous difference between having a decent starting 15 and having a squad that can genuinely compete. We also got to live though a number of periods of sub standard coaching and star recruits who never really contributed like they should have. I’ve also had family in the past basically refuse to go to Reds games with me (as I write this I’m not sure which part of this is supposed to make you feel better).

If there is a bright spot in the Rebels situation it seems to be that there is some genuine traction in the Rebels providing a genuine pathway for some home grown talent, and that some of that talent is pretty damn good. That is a really important thing in the Australian rugby landscape if we are going to continue to support 5 teams.

Hopefully there is change soon enough to start the turn around. I’m not sure where it is going to come from but definitely needs to include a change that will get more out of the resources available.

For this season I do how we see some players back in the near future and some of the senior guys earn their pay check. I’ve been a big fan of To'omua so I find it a bit sad to watch him at present.

in the meantime - for what it’s worth - I think the majority of us sympathise greatly and take very little joy in the current plight you guys are in and genuinely hope for a turnaround (never at the expense of our teams, of course). The only advice I can offer is to grab some beers, or whatever your drink is of choice, and enjoy the game tonight for what it hopefully will be - a quality game between the perennial top dog in Australian Super rugby and the brash contender trying to prove they are the real deal. Whatever happens you can just enjoy it for what it is safe in the knowledge your team isn’t going to lose.

It’s the home grown talent that keeps me invested

As a kid that played rugby before the Rebels and always dreamed of having a side to call my own and to aspire to represent. I am so immensely proud every time a local lad debuts