The Reds Merry-Go-Round

While watching the Reds play the Bulls on Sunday morning I had a thought…….. How many changes have there been in the Reds sides over the first eight games of the season?

Let’s start with what has been stable.

James Slipper has started every game at lose head prop. And his replacement, Ben Daley, has been named on the bench for each game, however missed one game as a late change. The only other position where there has been no changes is Scrum Half with Will Genia also starting every game.

Hooker duties have been shared between Saia Fainga’a and Chibba Hansen. And with tight head prop duties being shared between Greg Holmes and Sam Talakai in the starting sides and Sef Faagase on the bench the front row seems to have been pretty stable.

The back row has also been fairly stable. Other than for one week of suspension Liam Gill has had the seven jersey on his back. Adam Thomson has had a hold of the blindside flanker role for five of the games, missing the first round through injury and slipping into eight to replace the injured Jake Schatz on Sunday morning. Schatz has only missed the one round and Curtis Browning has been a capable reserve and replacement in the starting side when required.

So that is 12 players from a total of about 36 used over the eight games. So what of the other 24?

Well, seven of them are locks. No kidding -:

James Horwill (6 start) Marco Kotze (4 start, 4 bench) Dave McDuling (5 start, 2 bench) Rob Simmons (1 start) Tom Murday (3 bench) Ed O’Donoghue (1 bench) Adam Korczyk (2 bench)

To be fair, looking at the team structures it appears the Korczyk, and possibly Murday, are being used as flexible replacements for the locking positions and the loose forwards. Why else would you have Kotze, Murday and Korczyk all on the bench in the one game?

Ignoring swaps from one side of the scrum to the other there have been four different starting lock combinations. I thought about counting the different combinations that actually played with the replacements, but decided I preferred my level of sanity just the way it was.

So, that leaves 17 different backs having been used, both starting and on the bench, in eight games. Excluding the scrum half. Anybody else just go “Wow”?

There have been four different fly halves used over the season. Karmichael Hunt, Nick Frisby, James O’Connor and Quade Cooper. Genia and Frisby have been the most common combination used. Three time they have started together. Just a pity that they are both scrum halves.

In the centres there has been a little more stable. Samu Kerevi was at inside centre for the first two games until Anthony Fainga’a returned from injury. At this point Kerevi moved to the outside. Chris Feauai-Sautia started the season in the 13 jersey and also filled in for one week when Kerevi was injured. Ben Tapuai also spent one week here when both Kerevi and Feauai-Sautia were injured in round four. Making four combinations in the 8 games. Phew.

Now to the back three. This reminds me a little of a game of 52 pick-up. (This may be an exaggeration.)

We started the season with JJ Taulagi at full back and Lachie Turner & Chris Kuridrani on the wings. Kuridrani stayed on his wing until he was injured in round seven. Round eight he was covered by Feauai-Sautia and round nine by Lachie Turner.

The other wing. Well, it has been filled variously by Turner, Feauai-Sautia, O’Connor and Campbell Magnay. There has only been twice, rounds three and four, where the same three players have played together in the back three positions. And not once have the same players combined in positions 10 to 15.

After all this…. there are still six players out of the official 32 man squad who have not been in a game day squad and James Tuttle who has been taken to South Africa.

So what do you think? My head hurts. And you will need to forgive me if I have counted incorrectly.

I am not trying to make excuses for the Reds performance to date. I guess I am just asking if anyone else thinks that this constant shuffling of the playing roster is one of the reasons for a chain of poor performances.