Rebels and Force face season-defining battles

One way or another, history will be made at McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle.

Matt Philip and his Rebels teammates celebrates victory over the Western Force when the two sides met back in July at Leichhardt Oval. Picture: Getty Images

One way or another, history will be made at McDonald Jones Stadium in Newcastle on Saturday afternoon. Either the Melbourne Rebels will win to earn their first berth in the playoffs, or the Western Force will break through for their first Super Rugby AU win, which coach Tim Sampson insists they deserve.

It could be said that both teams thoroughly deserve to achieve their goals. This tournament would never have cleared the launch pad had not the Rebels and Force both been prepared to go on the road for the best part of three months due to COVID-19. Neither have played a home match — a feature the Brumbies, Reds and Waratahs all enjoyed.

It’s extraordinary that 20 Force and 19 Rebels players have made their Super Rugby debuts during the course of this domestic competition. In the early rounds, as Wallabies coach Dave Rennie lamented, games were littered with errors and scarcely got off the ground. But as the competition progressed, the mistakes became rarer, the standard higher and suddenly Australia began to look very comfortable with the demands of being able to maintain five Super Rugby sides.

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“When you see how many Australians are playing overseas, on top of the players we have developed here, it is a pretty shortsighted comment to say we don’t have the depth in Australia to field five teams,” Force captain Ian Prior said. “Obviously there are a few things to do around salary caps and overseas pressures — we need to be a bit creative in that space as a country and as a sport — but there is definitely enough talent in Australia to sustain five teams, I personally believe.”

Sadly one of the finds of the season won’t be on deck for the Rebels after rising tighthead Pone Fa’amausili tweaked his hamstring in training.

“He made a line break and then he chip and chased, channelling Christian Cullen, I suppose,” Rebels coach Dave Wessels quipped, trying to make light of what really was a heavyweight situation. Still, with Matt Gibbon back from injury to act as tighthead reserve, it was far from doom and gloom for the Melbourne side.

Perhaps more importantly, Dane Haylett-Petty is back for the Rebels, bringing with him all the captaincy poise to the fullback position. The Rebels were lucky to be able to pass the captaincy armband to Matt Toomua who certainly showed all his worth in the last minutes against the Waratahs last week when he elected to shoot for penalty goal to earn his side a losing bonus point.

The importance of that point means that the Rebels don’t need to outscore the Force by three tries or more to qualify for the final. As long as they win, and by the four points they need to wipe out their current deficit on aggregates, they will progress and the Waratahs will drop out of the race.

“There is not a lot between the teams in this comp,” Wessels said. “If we can win on the weekend, there will be three teams that ended on four wins, so it is all very close. We haven’t played any home games. We’ve been on the road the whole time and the win percentage of home games is very high. But even when we haven’t felt we played well, we still have got points off every team.”

The Reds would feel the same way about the Brumbies, their opponents at Suncorp Stadium. The last two times they have played the competition leaders they have taken a point from them but it was no more than a losing bonus point. Having lost by three points in the Super Rugby season opener in Canberra in January and then by two points when they met up with them, again in Canberra, in the Super Rugby AU competition, there is a desperation for the Reds to finally get the job done.

“It would be good to get one back on them,” said captain Liam Wright. “We want to get a win against them to make a bit of a statement and get some ­momentum going into the finals. We want to put the heat on them a little bit and show them that we are making some moves going into the playoffs.”

The Reds have demonstrated that their defence, under coach Michael Todd, has improved dramatically this season but the one conspicuous exception was defending the driving maul. They held the Rebels out on August 15 but they were powerless to prevent the Brumbies from scoring all three tries against them off their lineout maul. And Brumbies coach Dan McKellar has reintroduced their try-scoring weapon, hooker Folau Fainga’a just to remind the Reds of that fact.

As the Waratahs discovered a fortnight ago, overcompensate on stopping the driving maul and the Brumbies will hit you out wide. With both halves Nic White and Bayley Kuenzle capable of putting in the crosskick, there will be no let up for the Reds’ defenders.