Super Rugby: Gritty Force leave Queenslanders red-faced

An inspired, well-coached Western Force side embarrassed a clueless Queensland Reds at Suncorp Stadium last night.

Western Force’s Luke Burton makes a break.

An inspired, well-coached Western Force side embarrassed a clueless Queensland Reds at Suncorp Stadium last night, scoring 40 points on the road for only the third time in their Super Rugby history.

How the Australian Rugby Union can cut this spirited, determined team from Perth remains a staggering mystery. They now have overtaken the Reds in the Australian conference and with three home matches still to come, who is to say they will not emerge as the one Australian team to play in the finals?

Certainly it won’t be the Reds — and nor should it be. On paper, they should have blitzed the Force. Instead, they underestimated them yet again, squandering chances left and right and meekly conceding the gain line throughout. This may have been the nadir of a spectacularly poor season.

The Force, by contrast, had heroes not just on the pitch — especially five-eighth Peter Grant who kicked seven from seven, centres Billy Meakes and Curtis Rona and lock Adam Coleman — but also up in the coaches box, where head coach Dave Wessels read the play brilliantly by stacking his bench with finishers like Tatafu Polota-Nau and Richard Hardwick who played all over their Queensland counterparts in the 40-26 win.

Wessels typically shrugged off the praise. It wasn’t the win, as such that pleased him but the fact that the Force, having travelled around the world in the past two weeks, had then shrugged off a 55-6 thrashing by the Highlanders to defeat a supposedly desperate team playing at home and coming off a bye.

Queensland coach Nick Stiles was distraught. “I’m filthy, mate, simple as that,” he said. “We can’t sustain 80 minutes of football. We’re happy to do things in spurts and patches and that doesn’t win you football games. You have to have a desire to compete for 80 minutes and be ruthless for 80 minutes.”

Three penalties for high tackles, two yellow cards, their 12th of the season, a record for Super Rugby, illustrated how little effort the Reds were prepared to put in. Small wonder Stiles was disgusted with his side

The Reds had convinced themselves before the match that they would not disrespect the Force but then the worst possible thing happened — they scored within five minutes of the kick-off. But instead of Duncan Paia’aua’s try spurring them on, the Reds thought it would all come without them doing the hard yards.

The Force, meanwhile, were taking their chances at every turn. On their first two visits to the Reds’ quarter, they came away with points, as Grant punished flimsy headhigh tackles with penalty goals. At 6-5, the Force probably were surprised to find themselves in the lead. So imagine their shock when they went into the break 13-5 ahead after passive Reds defence saw number eight Isi Naisarani make huge inroad into the 22 before lock Ross Haylett-Petty was able to plunge over for his first Super Rugby try.

Nick Frisby, who had botched a first half try by running too upright and getting held up, made partial amends when he kick-started the second half by triggering a brilliant try as he split the defence on kick return, linked with Cooper who ducked under a head high tackle to put lock Lucan Tui over for a try.

But scarcely had the Wallabies halfback redeemed himself than he was back in the villain’s book, lying on the ground and kicking the ball out of Ruru’s hands as he dived over the top of the ruck to catch the Reds napping on their own tryline. The result — a penalty try and a trip to the sin bin.

Another Grant penalty goal pushed the Force out to a 23-12 lead but the Reds fought back with two crucial but unadventurous driving maul tries from lineouts.

The Force, however, didn’t deserve to lose this match, not when they had shown such spirit. But how they rubbed in their superiority, Coleman riling his Test captain Stephen Moore with a jibe before the Force crashed through flimsy defence for two final tries.