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Rebels ready to get the job done without star halves

Quade Cooper (Photo by Getty Images)

Melbourne Rebels vice-captain Sam Talakai says his Super Rugby side didn’t skip a beat when told star halves Will Genia and Quade Cooper weren’t starting against the Crusaders in Christchurch on Saturday.

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Despite the clash being a last-gasp chance to secure a maiden finals berth, Genia will miss the match under the Wallabies Test rotation policy while Cooper will start off the bench for the first time this season.

Even without finals riding on the result, the Crusaders present a formidable challenge as defending champions, runaway competition leaders and unbeaten at home in their past 27 games.

But Talakai said his team had full faith in their new halves combination with Wallabies recruit Matt Toomua getting his first crack at the Rebels No.10 jersey alongside Michael Ruru.

“We’ve got Matty Toomua in and Michael Ruru has played a lot of Super Rugby so we don’t lose that much belief in our team,” the prop said.

“We talk about having a squa d mentality – whoever gets a call on the team list has to step up and we believe in that next guy.”

The Rebels acknowledge they were out-muscled and out-smarted at the breakdown by the NSW Waratahs in their disappointing five point loss last round.

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Talakai said the Crusaders, who have veteran All Black Matt Todd returning at openside flanker, presented a slightly different challenge but one that they were ready for.

“They push the boundaries a lot, like all good Kiwi teams do,” Talakai said.

“We’ve worked on small tactics that we can hopefully put on them to get some clean ball for our backs.”

With two games remaining the Rebels must win at least one to keep their play-off hopes alive but Talakai said his team wasn’t feeling the pressure and rather felt privileged to be in such a position.

He said that rather than talking about results they were focused on playing well.

Despite their commanding lead on the overall Super Rugby ladder the Crus aders have only won two of their last five matches.

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Talakai said the Rebels couldn’t be pointing any fingers that their opponents were vulnerable.

“They’ve had a few slips but we are looking in our own backyard – we’ve had a few slips too so we are working on our own game and how we can be better.”

– AAP

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Flankly 1 hour 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?

4 Go to comments
N
Nickers 1 hour ago
Scott Robertson responds to criticism over All Blacks' handling errors

Very poor understanding of what's going on and 0 ability to read. When I say playing behind the gain line you take this to mean all off-loads and site times we are playing in front of the gain line???


Every time we play a lot of rugby behind the gain line (for clarity, meaning trying to build an attack and use width without front foot ball 5m+ behind the most recent breakdown) we go backwards and turn the ball over in some way. Every time a player is tackled behind the most recent breakdown you need more and more people to clear out because your forwards have to go back around the corner, whereas opposition players can keep moving forward. Eventually you run out of either players to clear out or players to pass to and the result in a big net loss of territory and often a turnover. You may have witnessed that 20+ times in the game against England. This is a particularly dumb idea inside your own 40m which is where, for some reason, we are most likely to employ it.


The very best ABs teams never built an identity around attacking from poor positions. The DC era team was known for being the team that kicked the most. To engineer field position and apply pressure, and create broken play to counter attack. This current team is not differentiating between when a defence has lost it's structure and there are opportunities, and when they are completely set and there is nothing on. The reason they are going for 30 minute + periods in every game without scoring a single point, even against Japan and a poor Australian team, is because they are playing most of their rugby on the back foot in the wrong half.

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