Rebels’ ready for the Brumbies’ clash say McGahan and Higginbotham

Melbourne Rebels co-captain ready for another tough encounter.

So far the Rebels’ season has seen the team play against the finalist and the winner of last years’ Super Rugby season, and their next game will be against the team that lost the semi-final against the eventual champions.

Scott Higginbotham opinion of the Brumbies showed his respect for the team: “semi-finalist last year and finalist the year before, (they are a) strong side, they’ll come here to play, (they are a) very structured side. It’s gonna be a tough match. They got a lot of quality backs in their team, guys like Henry Speight or Tevita Kuridrani, you gotta be on top of those guys, and their forwards are very strong.” Asked about the new coach at the Brumbies, Higgers pointed out that: “Stephen (Larkham) has brought a little more flair to their attack as opposed to how structured they used to be  when Jack White was there, that’s something we have to be careful of.

The Rebels’ co-captain said looking back at last week’s game it was clear to say that the Rebels go into every match with the want to win, we play week to week.
“We can take a lot of confidence from last week, we scored 4 tries, defended well. We only had 35-40% possession, so we have to keep more the ball, we can just defend for 80% of the game and expect not to let triesin. We should have wrapped up the game”, Higgers continued, “(at) 28 all we had that opportunity to kick a penalty, we could have gone ahead and gained momentum from that, we let that one go against a championship team like the Waratahs, they know how to win games, they got on the front foot and they won the game.”

Rebels’ Head Coach Tony McGahan also spoke about last week’s loss against the defending champions: “we had a pretty good week, we had a close look at the Waratahs game, we drew a lot of positives out of that, not really pin pointing the last 6/7 minutes, we need to stop the 28 points previous to that, (there are) great opportunities for us to improve. We need to make sure going forward with improvement as a group and as individuals in what will be a really tough contest against the Brumbies.” Reflecting back on some of decisions from Angus Gardner in the game between the Rebels and Waratahs, the coach said that: “we tried to work on the ones that we can, some still remain unclear from our review and from the feedback we’ve got.” looking at the referee for Saturday’s game, Dumper expressed his relief: “we are lucky enough to have Steve Walsh this week, a very respected referee from all players and coaches; we are looking forward for a clean game”.

Talking about the player’s group Tony was asked about Radike Samu, who is very easy to be seen training hard in the group on the background: “Radike is entering his 2^nd week in the programme,” Tony said ”we hope to have him further down the line, after the bye.”

And dwelling on another new comer, Sefanaia Naivalu, first player to move from the Dewar Shield to to the Super Rugby, the coach said that “we are really delighted with Sefa, he certainly made a mark in all games he played, in the Reds and Highlanders trial, and he carried that form in the first two games, he hasn’t put a foot wrong with his touches, he is very exciting part of the back line.”

“The (NRC) competition was fantastic for Australian rugby,” continued McGahan ”in particular for us here at Melbourne for our players to continue to train and play together and to build a more cohesive group also outside of the field”

Building a group is a concept, that is clearly at heart with the Rebels’ coach, in fact it is at the centre of his analysis of the next opponents: “there are some parallels between the two (Brumbies and Waratahs), the Brumbies have been together in the last 4 years as a group, they are very comfortable with what each other brings and they adapt very well, they are very systematic side in everything they do, they are very well coached and drilled, they react very well in every situation. We will be challenged in areas where we haven’t been tested in the past two weeks.” Concluded the coach.