#10 Laurie Weeks
This may be an interesting one for this list, when you consider that the Reds won a premiership the year after Laurie’s departure. But that overlooks the quality of the player and the individual, what he provided the Reds in his short career there and what he has shown at the Rebels since.
Weeks came to the Reds for the 2009 Super Rugby season and would start in all but two matches, usurping the previous year’s incumbent tight head, Danya Edwards. Under the guidance of former Wallaby prop, Ewen McKenzie, Weeks had a break out year in 2010 starting in every match and forming a powerful scrummaging combination with Saia Fainga’a and Ben Daley which included a memorable destruction of a powerful Bulls pack.
Weeks however would opt to leave the Reds for the new boys in Melbourne, with some suggesting it was the QRU’s reluctance to let him play for his beloved club side Sydney Uni that was a key factor. Whilst the Reds would enjoy significant success the next year, the Rebels would struggle and Weeks would start more games from the bench than in a starting jersey. The Wallaby cap that seemed imminent whilst at Ballymore was now slipping away.
However Weeks is nothing if not a committed club man and continued to put in and was rewarded with a Wallaby debut in 2014 , ironically under McKenzie now as the national coach. Weeks’s personality remains one of his strongest selling points as he is a highly popular team mate and fan favourite. There is no doubt he would have continued to develop an immensely strong Queensland fan base
