Reds v Bulls: New look faces the unrecognisable

Jono Lance appears the sole playmaker or a revamped, potentially exciting backline that knows how to score tries.

Reds playmaker Jono Lance.

It’s difficult to know which of the following Queensland rugby fans will have most difficulty coping with at Suncorp Stadium tomorrow — a Bulls side that doesn’t just play bash-and-barge rugby, Jono Lance as sole playmaker or a revamped, potentially exciting backline that knows how to score tries.

It’s a toss-up, but after 21 years of professional Super Rugby in which the Bulls have been the quintessential South African side — huge, physical but one-dimensional — the sights of a team from Pretoria playing, as Reds assistant coach Tony McGahan put it yesterday, like “a bigger version of an NZ side”, might be just too much to take. This, after all, is the team that gave Super Rugby the midfield box kick.

“They’re almost unrecognisable,” said McGahan. “They’re playing a real width-to-width sort of game, with a lot of passing, in-passing channels around their forwards has increased, they’re flicking the ball out the back, running the ball from deep, running the ball from turnovers, running the ball from deep counter inside their 20. They’ve still got the strong elements of set piece, strong carries off the nine, but they’ve added a real dimension to their fitness, their passing ability and their ability to seek space around the edges.”

For all that, the Reds look to be gearing up to play the Bulls of old, by dropping inside centre Duncan Paia’aia to the bench and creating a midfield of Samu Kerevi at 12, with Chris Feauai-Sautia coming in from the wing to outside centre. The only new face will be on the right wing, where Filipo Daugunu, the sensation of last year’s National Rugby Championship, comes in to make his starting debut. He has looked impressive coming off the bench in the first two Reds matches of the season and the moment has arrived for him to display his X-factor.

There is little doubt that the four failed opportunities the Reds had to score tries against the Brumbies last week prompted coach Brad Thorn’s attempt to bring some quality finishing to the Queensland outside backs this week. Daugunu was the leading tryscorer in the NRC and he certainly knows his way to the line.

Paia’aia’s axing will dump a heavier load on to the one remaining playmaker, Lance.

“It’s definitely a big opportunity for me in that sense,” Lance said yesterday. “But at the same time Samu has really worked on his ball-playing, his passing and his kicking game, so I don’t think we will lose much there.”

Former Wallabies coach John Connolly, during his brief period working with the Reds, always saw Kerevi as an out-and-out 12, though a 12 in the mould of a late-career Ma’a Nonu. The dynamic All Black started out his career very much as a battering ram but by the time he took his leave of the NZ national side as a 103-Test veteran in 2015, he was an accomplished ballplayer.

Kerevi never really had the look of a 13 and, hopefully now that he has made the move into what appears to be his best position, the Reds could start reaping the benefits.

The new 13, Feauai-Sauita, has had such a stop-start career that most people forget that he already has two Test caps to his credit and a 100 per cent winning record in his only international start, against Scotland in 2013 — when he scored a try to boot. But there were encouraging signs during last year’s NRC that he was coming back into his own, signs which held up under the pressure of the first two Super Rugby games of the season.

Like Kerevi, he looks to have found his position on the rugby field. But more than that, he looks to have found himself.

“His game has matured, like himself,” said McGahan.