Reds 2014

[Lindommer]

tranquility, me old mucker, I'm delighted you're hurt and very wounded following the Reds defeat; we all should feel like that when our team loses. But to somehow justify launching into an anti-Tahs tirade is a bit rich. There are many rusted-on Tahs supporters on this forum (I've met most of 'em, they're almost as Tah tragic as me), I can assure you they're not fair weather supporters and I can't see where they're pouring shit on the Reds/Reds supporters after one good win following a spate of defeats. Without appearing condescending I'd suggest a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down might be called for.

How 'bout you get in touch with one of the Brisbane crew and meet us when the Tahs play up there, then you can judge for yourself whether we're a lot of spouters of "fucking condescending bullshit" you've obviously taken offence at.

 

[cyclopath]

Don't have a pithy little go at me, as you walk away with your tail between your legs. Their is nothing bitter about my attitude towards NSW. I don't even live in QLD anymore, as I have said I'm speaking facts. The NSW bias from the ARU in our code is unprecedented. Yet you have nothing to show for it, and are the most likely club to actually cease to exist if left to your own devices. All of this when your market is the largest in the country, in the supposed rugby heartland of this country.

Tail between my legs? No, sleep was more important than wasting more time arguing with you, as I can see your mindset on this is fixed, and I can see I made the right call.


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[Ruggo]

Time to just settle down fellas. Count to ten and read back through the last few pages and clearer heads will see how bitchy this thread has become.

 

[Scoey]

Aaaaanywaaaaay.... One of the bigger questions for me is what to do for this weekend. Short turn around is bad for any wholesale changes but we got bashed. If there was any feeling of complacency then I think benching a few and bringing a couple if younger guys in may be the shake up we need.
As someone suggested earlier, Browning and McDuling may be worth considering. Also we need to shore up that centre pairing. Hopefully Harris will be back and Ant can got back to 13.


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[spectator]

The Waratahs were simply too good across the park on Saturday night. They owned the breakdown, and owned the game.

If some (stress some here) Tah's fans wish to gloat then that is their choice but in my experience that sort of attitude tends to bite you in the arse somewhere down the track. You should be happy for your team, they were awesome.

Reds fans need to relax. One from two on the road isn't a tragic start. Not the best performance the other night but hopefully a few things are worked on during the week and a positive rebound is witnessed on Friday night. No need just yet to call for heads, I'm sure the players and staff feel the disappointment more than supporters. They're the ones that have been putting in the hard work.

Go the Reds!

 

[Scoey]

I meant to add to my post also: or do we leave them as is and let them redeem themselves against the Cheetahs?


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[USARugger]

As someone suggested earlier, Browning and McDuling may be worth considering. Also we need to shore up that centre pairing. Hopefully Harris will be back and Ant can got back to 13.


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I need to rematch the match but honestly if Ant is starting again this week it's going to be because CFS was even more shit than Ant when he came on at 13. Both of them were remarkably disappointing and have me very uneasy about our 13 prospects down the track now. Tapuai clearly not a 13 and his defensive work didn't do Ant too many favors last weekend either.

I'm still replaying that one set piece try in my head over and over, one of the laziest/worst defensive reads I've seen made in a while.

It's very hard to win anything when the fulcrum of your defense isn't defending and aren't offering anything on attack either. The apparent lack of development from CFS over the past 2-3 seasons (although hampered heavily by injury) make me worried that we won't be able to field a center pairing that is balanced on both sides of the ball and really up to the standard we need to be at to push into the playoffs. Lacking a gain line runner in 12/13 is only further highlighting the lack of a gain line runner in the pack. Lots of talk about us hurting in this department without Digby but fuck me if you're leaning almost exclusively on a winger to get you over the line you have lots of other skeletons in that closet to deal with.

I dunno. Still a bit shocked but will be watching the game slowly and deliberately this week before I form any new opinions over things.

Not sure if calling for RGs head is really worthwhile, or productive, right now. We're 2 games in and I honestly think there's maybe 2-3 people total on these boards who could describe what actually went on behind closed doors between RG/Link last year (who coached, whether or not they like each other, etc) and how that relates to our results so far. I don't think any of those people are willing to burn dozens of bridges in the real world to give us all the scoop. For the time being we are stuck with Graham no matter what, so let's at least give him until Round 5 or 6. If we're still struggling then, it may be time to start pointing fingers. Doing it right now, well, you may as well be shouting at the sky.

@Scoey

Only real changes I can think of that make sense in the short term would be slapping Will a couple of times and remind him he is being paid to clear the fucking ball and kick the fucking ball not sook around for half of the game. It's degrading behavior coming from someone who used to be thought of as a future captain of the Wallabies.

 

[Train Without a Station]

What's this talk of Browning? Robinson was great from the bench and the only place he should be moving is possibly to start. Gill was fucking average. Seriously if you want to bang on about how good he was, watch the fucking game again. He made a bucketload of tackles, fucking great. As I said in the Rebels thread to those people praising Fugistaller, find me a 7 who doesn't make a lot of fucking tackles.

However, I don't advocate replacing a player based on an isolated performance. Gill was our best only a week ago and he wasn't terrible on the weekend, he just wasn't particularly good.

Hopefully Woody puts all 3 backrowers on notice and tells them we've got Beau keen as fucking mustard to start, and Browning keen for a fucking jersey too, and they need to hit the breakdown with some intensity if they want to ensure they stay starting. Quirk was immense for the first half of 2013, and Shatz was the Stan Pilecki medal winner in 2013. They are still these players, it was merely a bad performance.

Again, I'm in the same boat about McDuling. Horwill and Simmons are the incumbent wallaby locks, they were ineffective at times on the weekend, and need to bring a significantly greater intensity this week. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and start calling for untried players as if they are the saviour. EOD has also been a great performer for the Reds in his time. As said above, they are still great players, it was one bad performance. Let's not lose our minds over it.

The good thing about rugby is after games like that you get a chance to redeem yourself, generally only 7 days later. Let's see how they go there before we advocate widespread changes.

The only change I'd call for in the line up would be Hanson to start over Saia, and CFS to drop off the bench. He was ineffective as a runner, constantly getting driven backwards by smaller players and he often looks a little lost defending in a bit of space.

 

[Train Without a Station]

Oh yeah, and I'd agree with USA Rugger on any slapping Will Genia. Potentially even benching him for a game and telling him not to be a fucking petulant child and to man the fuck up.

 

[tigerland12]

In regards to centers, and in particular 13, may not be long before Samu Kerevi makes an appearance.

Don't know if he'd be ready, but he's exactly the type of 13 we need long term.

And with hard running wingers, Shippers is going OK, but Chris Kuridrani is definatly a line bender.

Hard to tell when you've only seen them play Premier rugby, but they fit the mould of what we need at 13 and 11 respectively. In 5-7 rounds time it wouldn't surprise me to see them in the 23.

 

[Train Without a Station]

Tigerland, that is a point to be mindful about, them only having been seen in Premier Grade.

Between the Pacific Cup fixtures and bench appearances though, we should be able to gauge if a player can make the step up.

 

[thierry dusautoir]

So much angst...everybody love everybody.

Also do I need to remind people that the last time we were flogged in such a fashion, we won a premiership?

 

[TheKing]

I'm really very, very keen to see Samu Kerevi get a shot at 13 sooner rather than later. He's still in a moonboot for a few more weeks, but he tells me he's up around 108 kilos and raring to go.

If there's a repeat performance of people just not getting over the gameline, just tell him pick a hole, run an unders line and get the attention of the Wallaby flyhalf, who's entire skill set caters to getting the ball to people running in to holes.

Another thing I thought was that Dom Shipperley has been struggling from what I've seen, but I'll be honest I didn't watch the second half of the Tahs game. I'm not sure who was in the #23 jersey against the rebels, because while I thought it looked like Toua the program said it was Kuridrani, and if it was CK then he should be given a crack at 11. If the team is getting dominated by big guys like Kane Douglas, Potgieter and Skelton, I would love to him run that classic Quade->Digby short inside ball, because before you could blink he'd be in to that second wave of defence, looking to draw and pass to a bloke like Turner or Toua with the pace to beat the chase

Did I see Holmes starting against the Tah's? For all the talk about him being a dedicated scrummager it didn't look like he could do too much to help out the scrum. Shunt him to the bench, and bring in Albert Anae. If Link liked him enough to involve him in the Wallabies, give him a shot against the Cheetahs front row next week and see if he sinks or swims - in any case he's a big bloke who will get us over the advantage line.

I really want to buy Ed Quirk a beer. You know what, I'd buy him two. I can't count the number of times where I saw the Fat Lady singing down the blindside before a one handed tackle saved the day, and that was just in the first half. Quirk and Gill were immense in defence, and were my two joint men of the match



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[Parse]

I think what the Reds are missing is one of those psych coaches, those guys that get the players up for the game mentally. What really disappointed me on saturday is that the Reds didn't look like they wanted to play, they had no enthusiasm and no intensity. From memory, the reds are the only team that don't have someone getting the players up for the game mentally, I believe when Link was there, he basically did this as part of the way he coaches. he could get the guys up by presenting different things to stir them mentally. How many times did we hear they had did something the team had not done before by winning under certain circumstances.

With Richard Graham, I don't think he can do that, he doesn't seem to have the ability to give the guys the mental push.

I mean, how hard is it to get the team up for it when it's the old QLD vs NSW rivalry? If Graham couldn't figure that out, then we have some problems.

 

[suckerforred]

Has anyone else noticed a subtle shift in the game plan of the Reds over the last couple of seasons?

To me there seems to be more kicking to get out of our own terrority rather then assessing the situation and, if needs be and circumstances apply, running from behind our own try line. This seemed to be highlighted to me in the Brumbies game with Toua's kicking.

Toua is not the best kicker in the team. In fact I would put some of the forwards ahead of him. But ball in hand he is always going to be a danger, so, why the hell was he kicking?

As to the Tahs game. They played well. The Reds played really really really badly. One good think is that the only way is up from that level. Or at least I hope so.

 

[Train Without a Station]

We developed out most successful game plans playing to our strengths. We seem to have adopted a Robbie Deans-esque shift in game plan to what we think we need to do in order to compete with other teams, rather than utilising the best skills of the players out our disposal.

Based on the players we have we should be looking to avoid kicking, and aiming to run wider and in broken play. We have an extremely quick back 3 but aren't using it.

 

[Troy]

I thought we'd always been on the upper end of the kicking scale when you look across all 15 teams.

I do think we could do with a Head Doctor! If you're not mentally in the right head space doesn't matter who you are you'll have an off game. To me that's just as important as fitness.

 

[USARugger]

Okay, so lost a few hours this week so I'm still currently going over footage from Brumbies game but some things have popped out at me looking at our line out..

1) We need to stop trying to maul in our own 22, or get much better at mauling before we go to South Africa. With the exception of one maul against the Brumbies (on their 10m line) every single time we mauled the ball was from within our own 22. Not only this, but they are all off of short (4/5 man) line outs. Why?! We nearly paid for this with a try at the ass end of the Brumbies match.

I know we're doing it to set up for the kick from Genia, but again, why? Genia has a pretty average box kick, why not just send it back to Cooper or Harris and have them kick out instead? It's just too much risk for too little reward in my eyes. We have a strong line out that can contest opposition ball very frequently, losing a handful of meters in distance is a fine trade for me with that kind of line out as opposed to making it a crapshoot by running 4 man line outs immediately outside of your own try zone.

To top off the extra risk involved with these shorter line outs the kick-chase just literally is not there far too often. These are set plays..there is absolutely no excuse. So if these guys aren't chasing the shit out of that ball, why aren't they just in the line out so we aren't exponentially increasing our chance of losing the ball in the first place?

2) Our defensive mauling is abysmal. I know that the Brumbies are good team in tight and in the maul but watching them maul against us (in the second half especially) is giving me flashbacks of the Tahs back smashing our boys last weekend. We simply got shoved around in most, if not all of the mauls we attempted to defend.

The defensive mauls seemed to constantly end up rotating to one side or the other, effectively peeling off the "front row" of the opposition and allowing the rest of their maul to roam free..while creating a literal wall of their own players in between our pack and their ball carrier. Quirk nearly got carded scrambling in a misguided attempt to make up for this somehow.

3) Schatz is an underrated line out jumper. He's pretty tall at 6'3" and not the heaviest 8 around so you'd expect him to be a decent jumper, he's more than decent based on what I just watched! He was getting off the ground much faster than any jumper for the Reds, this was somewhat normalized by Quirk jumping a few times with the same front pod lifters and Schatz still visibly being more explosive getting off the ground. He secured a lot of pill for us in the 1st/2nd pods on our own throw and was a pretty huge pest on the Brumbie's throw ins as well, seriously disrupting their ball a few times (although the last one was definitely illegal, he more or less body slams the Brumbies front pod jumper in mid air).

The coaching staff has definitely noted his speed off the ground too, he was the other option when it came to disrupting the opposition line out besides Horwill.

 

[TOCC]

There is no point spreading the ball wide if you are up against a set defensive line....

The problem was in the forwards, lack of penetration and lack of bending the line meant the backline never had an opportunity... Conversely the Waratahs had an opposite scenario, there forwards were getting across the advantage line and setting a good platform for the backline, Reds backs were defensively never in the game because they were back peddling before they were even moving forward.



For those of you looking for someone to blame, just look back at the semi-final last year with the Crusaders, it was exactly the same scenario as Saturdays game..


The Reds have their strength, but they didn't play to them on the weekend, some fundamental kicking failures exasperated the problem and gave the Waratahs possession and field position..

 

[I like to watch]

The Tahs made a lot of breaks against a set defensive line the other night.
One problem you guys have,is the gentrification of Quade.
He no longer does those brain fart ridiculous errors, and as a consequence those absolutely amazing, come from nothing tries have also disappeared.
He returned a heap of kicks the other night,and either dished or kicked straight away,he seemed to play in the pocket most of the game.
He seems to be playing the same game he said he despised,under Deans.
Stats don't lie. In 2011 51 tries,then 40 & only 31 last year.