Reds 2021

[The Nomad]

Dru - I know you didn’t mean to offend me. I simply meant that the solution you are presenting as obvious isnt at all an obvious good solution in my eyes. And I suspect a lot of others, including the likes of Brad Thorn & Dave Rennie.

These are the things I know -
- we won’t drop any sides
- we need to play the Kiwis regularly to be competitive at test level
- we need our domestic comp to be compelling
- we need the Kiwis & they need us
- we don’t have truck loads of money to spend

I get that those things don’t fit together at the moment, maybe they never will. But I’d suggest chucking in the towel on TT is the worst of the alternatives available to us. So, somehow we need to manage a moneyball situation where we make lift the standards of our teams (or at least 3 of them) to be competitive at TT.

Now, having an NRC would be a big help, but it just may not be an option. And it would only be a start.

But, for the life of me, I can’t see how Qld, NSW, ACT & the Western Force organisations wouldn’t back themselves to bridge that gap in 2 seasons.

That isn’t meant to deride the Melbourne Rebels but, from my perspective, they seem to have the toughest job - although having said that they have some very good players in the core of their squad and I am placing a lot of perhaps unwarranted faith on the Waratahs to turn their ship around in a short time.

It also comes with the caveat that I feel the Force should be able to continue to utilise the benefits of the strength of their financial backing by Twiggy to supplement their roster with international talent.

We aren’t going to improve playing in our own bubble .

Yes it’s been a reality check playing TT , but we have seen improvement in out teams at a level that we won’t see if we just keep playing our own.

It’s also brought out the best in some our players . Harry Wilson has stood up to the challenge, playing better footy against Kiwi opposition than in Super AU.

It’s worth it .

Edit : agree with you TSR

 

[liquor box]

No it is actually saying that this one half of brilliance comes with qualifier that yes a) faced 14 players and b) they FAILED to back this up with any other significant half of footy dominance

Sorry point B) hugely significant. To be real I want to laud an Ozzie side but to be Frank reds deserve more criticism then praise from this TT and hope they use it to come back way better as they under achieved where I felt they should be.I doubt thorn would disagree.

They have been beaten resoundingly, but maybe this is because they simply are not good enough.

Why do we as QLD and Australian supporters believe that we should be able to beat team that are just better than us at all aspects of the game?

Criticism of our poor skills and game plan (if there is one - I struggle to believe that the game plan included kicking the ball at every opportunity to either Savea or Barrett) is justified, but we are boys playing against men so the results should not be criticised.