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Rebels ready for their first knockout match of the year - in the final round of the regular season

Will Genia in action for the Melbourne Rebels. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

The Super Rugby finals have come a week early for the Melbourne Rebels, according to their veteran halfback Will Genia.

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The Rebels are treating Friday night’s must-win last round clash against the Chiefs at AAMI Park as a final.

Melbourne must rebound from their shattering 66-0 loss to the Crusaders last Saturday in Christchurch, and beat the Waikato team to secure a maiden top eight play-off spot.

The Chiefs, who upset the Crusaders before their bye round, are looking for a bonus-point victory for them to book a finals position.

Genia, who missed the heavy defeat as part of the Wallabies rest policy, said his teammates were quickly moving on.

“The message has been strongly around not feeling sorry for yourself and understanding that we are in a position that if we win this week, we play finals,” Genia said.

“That’s enough motivation to want to pick yourself up and I think the guys have done that really well.”

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Genia, along with Quade Cooper and Matt Toomua, are the only players in the Rebels line-up who have played in Super Rugby finals.

He said his teammates needed to embrace the pressure and the opportunity.

“Knockout football has come for us a week early in that if we win, we go through,” Genia said.

“It’s about understanding that it’s one game at a time now.

“Once you get to this point of the season it doesn’t matter where you finish on the ladder, whether it’s first or eighth, if you win you go through and I think if we have that attitude and we prepare with that mindset I think we will do well.”

Genia had his right leg heavily bandaged on Tuesday. He said he had twisted his knee but wasn’t in doubt for the game.

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Test lock Adam Coleman hurt his shoulder during the Crusaders match and is their only injury concern.

Genia said the Chiefs had the ability to score plenty of points, but also have points scored against them.

“If we can tidy up parts of our game to allow ourselves to play some good rugby which we know we can, we know we can score some points,” he said.

Genia is off contract, with the Rebels hoping that this won’t be the Wallabies star’s last game in Melbourne.

Genia wouldn’t be drawn.

“I’m not too sure – we will wait and see,” the 31-year-old said.

“It’s all sort of up in the air a bit.”

– AAP

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Flankly 2 hours ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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