#2 Scott Higginbotham
Higgers was without doubt a victim of the Reds’ success, and the expansion of Australian Rugby. Scott’s value went up, as did that of many of his Reds’ team mates, after their 2011 Premiership. With the Melbourne Rebels coming into the comp the same year, this value was heightened further. It is fair to say that Scott didn’t necessarily want to leave Queensland, given the business he had started up here and the bloody big “Q” he had tattooed to his side. But he was offered a healthy contract with Melbourne in 2012 and the Reds weren’t prepared to match it.
Regardless, his loss sits at #2 in the top ten list because of the hole it created at the Reds. Higgers is a high impact, high skilled, massive unit for our backrow. When he left it we felt it. Jake Schatz and Ed Quirk competed admirably in 2013 at No 8 and blindside, but they couldn’t touch Scott for the impact he made on a game.
With tremendous profile off the park – the archetypal “Men want to be him, Women want to be with him”, his loss was the first really noticeable crack in the dismantling of our post 2011 glow.
