QR Reds Head Coach Ewen McKenzie has confirmed that Wallaby and Reds scrumhalf Will Genia will lead the side following the season-ending knee injury to captain James Horwill.
Horwill is facing a nine month layoff with major surgery to be followed by a lengthy rehabilitation program after he was carried off midway through the second half of the Reds’ thrilling 41-20 win over the Crusaders at Suncorp Stadium last night.
McKenzie said Genia had already been identified for his leadership qualities and made vice captain, so he was confident he would handle the additional responsibility – especially with the help of others in the team and with Horwill’s continued involvement off-field.
“He's in a good position on the field (at scrumhalf). We made him the vice captain because we thought he's got potential to lead. He certainly leads by example on the field; he does just about everything right in the game,” McKenzie said.
“He'll step up and we'll just consider our options of who'll support him in a vice captain role.”
McKenzie said while Horwill’s layoff will be lengthy, his long term recovery prospects were excellent.
“There’s a bunch of ligaments that need to be repaired. But the good news is the surfaces in there, the knee joint and everything, are all in pretty good shape. So once the ligaments are repaired and recovered he'll be back 100 per cent, so that's good for the prospects after (his recovery).”
McKenzie said Horwill was bearing up well despite the disappointment and he was keen to stay involved.
“He's obviously very upset but he's handling it pretty well. He'll be in here on Monday and ...he wants to still participate in what's going on. But there's things he can do to help us so we'll work on that in parallel with him getting the medical side of it sorted.”
McKenzie said the focus now was to put the disappointment of Horwill’s loss behind them and “just get on with it” and there had been no emotional talk of using Horwill’s injury as motivation for winning next Saturday’s Ballymore match against the Blues.
“That's the way sport works. It doesn't always pan out how you'd like. We don't want it to become a distraction: we're certainly confident about the guys we've got in our group and other guys'll step up and they might offer different things. We might have to adapt our game a little bit but we can't change anything so we'll just get on with it.
“To play the Blues here is terrific. A lot of the guys in the team haven't actually played at Ballymore in a Super (rugby) game. It'll be an honour and a great occasion. But the pressure's really on the players to keep delivering in the right style, so we'll be talking more about that than anything else.”
The injury news put a severe dampener on last night's celebration of what was one of the Reds’ best team performances in recent seasons. The pressure of the Reds defence forced their Canterbury counterparts into a host of uncharacteristic errors and when the visitors fumbled, the Reds pounced on the mistakes, scoring many of their points from turnover ball.
Reds flyhalf Quade Cooper scored 31 points - a new Reds’ individual Super Rugby record – with one of his two tries a superb effort in which he gave the pass that created the linebreak and then took the final pass from a sideline tip toeing Peter Hynes to somehow plant the ball right in the corner before the defence swamped him.
