Reds dominate Brumbies to set tone for grinding win

Six penalty goals to two unconverted tries. Will it bring the crowds flocking back to rugby?

Reds halfback James Tuttle gets the ball away against the Brumbies at Suncorp Stadium last night. Picture: AAP

Six penalty goals to two unconverted tries. Will it bring the crowd flocking back to rugby? Well, it just might when the winners were the youth-laden Queensland Reds, who hung tough to beat the Brumbies 18-10 at Suncorp Stadium last night.

As Jono Lance kicked his third penalty goal – James Tuttle landed the first three – the television camera flashed onto the coach’s box where Brad Thorn sat with a silly grin on his face as the realisation washed over him that he had just recorded the first Super Rugby win of his fledgling coaching career. Astonishingly, the Queensland crowd of 11,034 gave him a standing ovation.

Presumably, they weren’t applauding the brilliance they had just witnessed. Never once were the Reds headed in the match and never once did they look sure winners, even when they led 15-5 with six minutes to go. Sure enough, Isi Naisarani scored off the back of the shaky Brumbies scrum and suddenly it was game on again ... until the visitors’ defence was penalised right at the death and Lance delivered the coup de grace.

But what they were applauding was the courage of the Queenslanders. Without suspended captain Scott Higginbotham and Lukhan Tui, losing No 8 Caleb Timu to a yellow card for a cynical infringement and seemingly incapable of scoring a try through a Brumbies defence led brilliantly by halfback Joe Powell, the Reds muddled through, roughly taking the Brumbies on at their own game.

It was the Queensland scrum that was the biggest eye-opener. The Brumbies have had a dominant set piece since basically forever, certainly since Jake White coached them, yet the Reds dismantled it, earning a host of penalties.

To be honest, Queensland had looked like doing the same to the Rebels last week but the sending-off of Higginbotham partially disguised the Melbourne weakness up front. But there was no hiding for the Brumbies front row last night as the Queensland trio of Taniela Tupou, Brandon Paenga-Amosa and James Slipper at times were almost running forward, such was their dominance.

And when Slipper went off to a worrying injury, JP Smith carried on the good work, no doubt taking extra enjoyment out of out-scrumming his former teammates.

“The boys found a way to win,” Thorn said. “That’s what I’ve been wanting to see. When I said I wanted to see something, that’s what I wanted to see. I just love seeing Queenslanders going for it.”

Brumbies coach Dan McKellar admitted he was proud of his side’s defensive effort, holding the Reds tryless but he admitted he would have to do a full review of the set pieces.

“Certainly in the second half they got some real dominance through their scrum,” he said.

Sam Carter, the Brumbies captain, felt right to the death that his side would find the one play to steal the match, and certainly there were two driving mauls which ended the hooker held up over the tryline.

The Reds utterly dominated the first quarter of the match. Fat lot of good it did them, though, as they were denied a Tupou try on the controversial call of the television match official, George Ayoub, when it looked like he had made it to the tryline off a driving maul. From there, the Reds just panicked slightly, twice being bundled out in the corner – with Powell astonishingly making the tackles – while winger Eto Nabuli carried loosely and lost the ball a metre short.

Sure enough, the first chance the Brumbies had, they took it. Indeed, the try came in almost casual fashion, with Henry Speight hitting the ball up to within five metres of the line before Powell picked up and almost sauntered over. Come to think of it, the Brumbies second try was equally anti-climatic, as Naisarani used the referee Angus Gardiner as a screen to distract Liam Wright, then picking himself up off the turf and lunging at the line.

But while the Reds defence might have been curiously lame at the very moments when they should have been most determined, for the rest of the match they tackled manfully.