SUPER 14 ROUND 10

ADDED SATURDAY 19/04/2008

Attended the game at Suncorp last night,  Reds vs Force.  While it was great to see the Reds win,  and again continue to fight and battle to the end,  this time going to the wire scrapping hard for a fourth try,  I would have to say the Force were terrible,  but then you have to ask the question did the Reds make the Force terrible through their swarming,  choking play.

Richard Brown will rue the missed tackle on Turinui for a fair while,  it was pretty straight forward,  and should have been made,  and was the try that widened the gap and lifted the heads of the Reds.

It was reasonably easy to see a tired Quade Cooper become quite less direct and just drift a little and pass,  and though the night I thought the Reds ball players,  Barnes and Cooper on a number of occasions,  with choices,  hit the wrong runner,  once in particular,  with plenty on wide,  and plenty of options,  chose a really slow running Coutts lumbering around in midfield.

All my opinions stated,  it was a win,  and win in which they played to the end,  both positives,  the rest should continue to improve over time.  The Blues are certainly beatable next week,  but don't rely on my tips,  after running pretty well the last three weeks have turned very ordinary.

The story within the story though,  and it continues to remind me why I don't go out to matches like this,  was the four idiots behind us.  Loud,  obnoxious,  spilling drinks everywhere,  but their rugby knowledge made for some laughable moments.

The funniest of all was their theme of the night, James O'Connor.  He was the first thing they started talking about,  and the one they finished with.  By the end of the night,  James was 15 years old, still at Nudgee,  flying to Perth a couple of times per week for training,  been drafted into the Force,  and will show up later in the Nudgee 1st XV,  after his Western Force committments are finished.  Easy to see how rumours,  baseless stories get a foothold and continue to grow.  They had some very interesting other interpretations of various laws and decisions,  and let the world know loudly,  but judging by the guy behind me,  they may have watched a bit too much AFL.

On James O'Connor,  the kid certainly oozes enthusiasm,  and hit the line and threw some nice balls on a couple of occasions during his 20 minutes.  It would have been interesting to see Charlie Fetoai or Luafutu carry the football in his channel but that didn't eventuate,  and he had an occasional involvement in defence, and flew into one ruck for a cleanout.

So that is four kiddies from 2007 now having made their Super 14 debuts, with Robbie Horne probably the best looking of all of them,  but he has had some serious time on the field as well.

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