Reds cagey over revealing too much in trial against Waratahs
THE Queensland Reds will keep some aces up their sleeves in Friday night’s trial against the Waratahs in Narrabri to ensure they retain an element of surprise when the teams meet again a fortnight later in this year’s Super Rugby AU opener at Suncorp Stadium.
The 2021 season was launched on Wednesday, with the Reds desperate to go one better after losing last year’s final to the Brumbies.
The Queenslanders will get an indication of their pre-season progress in Friday’s trial against the Waratahs, who will have the added task of nullifying the threat of the Reds’ prized off-season recruit, former Melbourne Storm NRL winger Suliasi Vunivalu. However, Reds captain Liam Wright warned not to read too much into the result.
“We don’t want to show everything and I assume the Tahs will be the same,” Wright said. “We want to go in there and practise our shapes and our standards but we want to keep a few cards up our sleeve for Round 1 so hopefully we can pull a few sneaky ones on them.
“It’ll be good to have them (first) on Friday instead of the real one in two weeks, to get a bit of a teaser out there and find out what each other’s worth.”
Wright has noticed a lift in intensity at Reds training under coach Brad Thorn following the exposure of several players to the Wallabies’ environment last year.
“We’ve got a lot more guys speaking up, bringing back things they’ve learnt,” the 23-year-old flanker said. “The difference is we’ve really got 30 guys, 15 on 15, going against each other really hard at training. The real competition between everyone and trying to raise each other’s standards the whole time and pushing each other at training, that’s a thing (Thorn) has been big on. With higher training expectations we expect to perform better in games.”