Top spot awaits if Brumbies can win at home against Western Force

Brumbies coach Dan McKellar is prepared to ring the changes as his squad is almost certain to tie up top spot on the ladder.

Joe Powell and Solomone Kata celebrate a Brumbies try against the Rebels in their Round 6 Super Rugby AU game. Picture: Getty Images

It was a tongue-in-cheek question of Brumbies coach Dan McKellar and he got a chuckle out of it: How does it feel making 18 changes to his side in just two weeks?

Given that McKellar made 16 changes to his side ahead of the Waratahs game last week and still could reflect on a five tries to one 38-11 victory, small wonder he had a laugh ahead of the match on Friday night in Canberra against the bottom-placed Western Force.

Win against the Force and he certainly will have a selection headache ahead of the match against the Queensland Reds next week but given that the Brumbies will have already sewn up the No 1 position in Super Rugby AU, it’s a headache he probably can live with.

“They are tough conversations to have and you always feel for the players because all of our boys work hard and put the effort in, day in, day out, so it is always tough to pick the 23,” McKellar said.

“But we have developed this group for the last couple of years and we have good depth in most positions and we can’t complain about it.”

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Case in point: Joe Powell is the only change to the starting side, a Wallaby halfback coming in for Ryan Lonergan, who perhaps, at only 22, will come to know what it is like to wear the gold jersey, if only he gets a clear run with injuries.

Meanwhile, five-eighth Reesjan Pasitoa — one of three young Brumbies playmakers at the start of the season along with fellow youngsters Noah Lolesio and Bayley Kuenzle — comes onto the bench as McKellar switched from a 6-2 bench against the Tahs to a 5-3 split against the Force. A reflection, almost surely, of where he sees the main threat.

Yet Powell, one senses, needs to rise to the occasion. With the return of Test No 9 Nic White from Exeter, it suddenly has become very crowded in the Brumbies halfback ranks, with Lonergan and Issac Fines all contending for positions. Something — or someone — will have to give.

White might be the veteran of the quartet but he turned up for training on Monday after the NSW game with pages of note not just of his own 30-minute cameo off the bench but also of the team’s performance.

“And he does all that work on the Sunday so he is going to teach a lot of our players what a really good professional rugby union player looks like,” McKellar said.

The Brumbies coach insisted that there would be no complacency from his side and hopefully his players were paying attention.

For all McKellar’s warning that there are players in the Force ranks who have won World Cups — former All Black Richard Kahui — and captured Super Rugby titles — Jono Lance and Ian Prior — it will be hard for the Brumbies to look past the Force’s last outing, when they were comprehensively trounced 57-5 by the Reds.

Yet, to listen to Force coach Tim Sampson, the game only turned ugly over the final 25 minutes, when the Reds jumped from 15-5.

“Although the guys were really trying, we just went a bit flat in that second half, some back-to-back penalties, we lost a player to the sin bin for 10 minutes and the Reds got their tails up,” he said.

But the lesson of Super Rugby AU is that every side has at least one ugly result. And as the Force proved the first time they met the Brumbies this season, the match was very much a seesawing affair even if the ACT side always had it in their keeping after scoring two early tries in a blitzkrieg start.

“It’s important we match them at the start of both halves as they have a big focus on fast starts,” said the Force coach.