Tuttle recalls bad old losses
FOUNDATION halfback James Tuttle remembers the subtle “country bumpkin” sledges and being shunted to the outside training field at Ballymore when Queensland Country were the unloved also-rans of the National Rugby Championship.
No one understands the uplifting Country transformation more than Tuttle who will play in tomorrow night’s NRC grand final against the Canberra Vikings in Canberra as the only survivor of the team’s first outing on August 30, 2014.
Typically, it was a 37-13 trouncing from NSW Country at Bond University because for three long seasons Country did a lot of losing.
It has been only this season players knew they even had a winning song so infrequently was there need to belt out John Denver’s classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
“Cellar-dwellers to the grand final ... the transformation has been great and it’s been the buy-in from the players with Thorny right from pre-season training to be there at the end of the season,” Tuttle said of the journey with coach Brad Thorn.
Country’s lack of success in 2014-15 was exaggerated because they were the one NRC club which shared a training field with another which just happened to be the champion Brisbane City outfit of both seasons.
“It was definitely tough being around weights or training on a Monday morning when we came together as the Reds,” Tuttle said.
“The ‘country bumpkin’ lines were tossed about and the City boys would get around the dressing room like they were better than us with the big brother mentality which they probably had a right to.
“Country would get shuffled off to Field Two to train while the City boys had the bright lights of the main field.
“We’ve put the past behind us and guys like ‘Foundation Fred (Burke)’, our prop from that first game, have enjoyed singing ‘Country Roads’ which we never really got the chance to sing until this year.”
■ MICHAEL Hooper’s Wallabies have been warned to be on alert for a revised version of the Warren Gatland game plan which slew the All Blacks.
The Wallabies have named their top Test side for Sunday morning’s Test with Wales, with halves Bernard Foley and Will Genia back from illness and a calf injury, plus the retention of 104kg Samu Kerevi to pound into the Welsh defence from inside centre.