Queensland Reds and Melbourne Rebels looking to next season

For the Queensland Reds and Melbourne Rebels, tonight’s game at Suncorp Stadium is all about looking forward.

Liam Gill will captain Queensland tonight. Picture: Darren England

For the Queensland Reds and Melbourne Rebels, tonight’s game at Suncorp Stadium is all about looking forward. It would have been anyway, with both sides having long bowed out of the Super Rugby finals race, but last week’s massacres have ensured there will be no looking backwards for either of them.

In losing 50-5 against the Chiefs last Friday, the Reds handed the Waikato team their greatest winning margin in 278 games of Super Rugby. It didn’t seem it could get much worse for Australian rugby — until the following day, when the Rebels were handed an 85-26 hammering at the hands of the Crusaders, the heaviest defeat in their 95-game history.

“They (the Rebels) are happy to go along the same lines as we are and ignore last week,” said flanker Liam Gill, who in his final outing for Queensland — at least for the next two years — has been named as Reds captain for the match. After that, he will leave for Toulon whenever Wallabies coach Michael Cheika chooses to release him.

Indeed, Melbourne coach Tony McGahan could see little value in revisiting the 13 tries-to-four humiliation. “If it was a different part of the season we would have reviewed the hell out of it and really made a big thing out of it, but with one game to go … we don’t have any excuses there.”

This has been another doomed season for the Reds and probably was always going to be once they started with an unchanged head coach — even if he did last for only two weeks — but the Rebels, for all the battering they took last weekend in Christchurch, can still make this a successful year for the club. If they win tonight, they will finish with seven victories for the season, equal to their best season in Super Rugby, 2015. “That’s a record we want to get to,” said McGahan.

There will be a fair amount of emotion swirling around, with the Reds also farewelling Greg Holmes, Curtis Browning and reserves Saia Faingaa and Ben Daley, while this will be the last game for Melbourne’s foundation member Luke Jones — while Tamati Ellison, Mike Harris and Scott Fuglistaller won’t suit up for their final Rebels game.

Both teams will feature newcomers at fullback, with Tom Banks making his run-on debut for the Reds, marking Paul Asquith who, even in the midst of all the carnage against the Crusaders, still acquitted himself well. The fascinating selection, however, is of Jack Maddocks as the back three reserve for the Rebels. Despite coming with an imposing reputation from the Australian Under-20 side, he finds himself in rugby almost by accident, having set himself for a career under the baggy green.