Brumbies-Reds rivalry rises to new heights

Brumbies coach Dan McKellar believes the rivalry with the Reds has reached a new level of ferocity in Super Rugby AU.

The Reds’ Jordan Petaia scores in the dying moments of the clash with the Brumbies

There has been a tense competition between the ACT and Queensland since the Canberra side beat the Maroons 17-13 at Ballymore in 1972, but Brumbies coach Dan McKellar believes the rivalry with the Reds has reached a new level of ferocity in Super Rugby AU.

The Reds broke through for their first win in the national capital since 2014 with a try one minute from full-time to beat the Brumbies 40-38 on Saturday night, but McKellar saw that narrow loss as merely the first exchange of a war that will include two more battles before this season is out, the last of them almost certainly in the May 8 grand final.

“There has been a strong rivalry between the Reds and the Brumbies for a while now, but it has gone to another level since there two groups of players first started playing with each other,” McKellar said.

The teams have met five times over the past 14 months. They played the opening match of the 2020 Super Rugby season in Canberra, with the Brumbies winning a cliffhanger 27-24. Then, following the COVID abandonment of the season, they met again twice more in the regular Super Rugby AU season for a win apiece before the Brumbies emerged as 28-23 winners of the 2020 grand final. So when the match on Saturday went down to the wire, no one was the least bit surprised.

Certainly not Brad Thorn, the Reds coach. While he sensed that what was unfolding as a brilliant spectacle, as a coach he always knew the match was going to be “uncomfortable” to watch. “Uncomfortable” must have felt like “excruciating” as the Reds trailed 17-0 after only 12 minutes. “We like to make it hard on ourselves,” he quipped. “But the Brumbies don’t go away and we don’t go away either.”

While McKellar stopped short of any “rugby was the true winner” cliches, he did believe the fast-paced spectacle was precisely what the game needed.

“Dave Rennie (the Wallabies coach) would have gone to bed knowing we can name between 25 and 30 players from the Reds and the Brumbies – and half a dozen players who weren’t playing on the night – who can genuinely win a Bledisloe Cup within a couple of years,” he said.

Both coaches showered praise on the match referee Nic Berry, who showed the poise of a Kerry Fitzgerald – the Australian who controlled the original World Cup final in 1987 – in keeping the contest humming. But referees boss Scott Young also believed referees coach Mitch Chapman, the former Reds, Brumbies and Tahs lock, played a significant role in the success. “He has all the referees working together as a team,” Young said.

Yet once all the kudos had been handed out, McKellar still scoffed at any suggestion that Saturday’s match represented any sort of turning point in the Brumbies-Reds power dynamic, which has seen the Canberra side win 29 out of 39 in the history of professional rugby.

“Before the match started we didn’t have James Slipper, Allan Alaalatoa, Connal McInerney, Tom Wright, Solomone Kata, Bailey Kunzle, Billy Pollard or James Tucker,” he said. “We were the completely dominant side until we lost both props, Scott Sio and Tom Ross, to injury.”

The score favoured the Brumbies 30-16 when they exited around the 47 minute mark. Over the remaining 33 minutes, with Test prop Taniela Tupou and the Reds scrum overpowering replacement props Harry Lloyd and debutant Archer Holz, Queensland won the contest 24-6. In the end, those injuries, coupled with four errors as they attempted to exit their own quarter, cost the Brumbies the game.

The Brumbies now have the bye to rest their weary bodies — hoping that Slipper, for one, will be back — while the Reds will conclude the first round when they play the Western Force at Suncorp Stadium on Saturday.

The Force lost 10-7 to the Melbourne Rebels in Perth on Friday and will have had the weekend to reflect on the wisdom – or otherwise – of turning down multiple shots at goal.

Meanwhile, Young insisted referee Graham Cooper had done precisely the right thing in temporarily halting play to determine whether the match could continue after a lights failure at HBF Park. To the television audience, it seemed only a minor inconvenience because cameras enhance the available light, but on the ground things had become quite gloomy. In the end, play was allowed to resume and the Rebels came away with their first win of the season.