Wayne Smith | April 21, 2009


Article from: The Australian

THE Queensland coach is not thinking of changing his captain, the Queensland Rugby Union is not thinking of changing its coach.

The fallout from the Reds' humiliating Super 14 implosion against the Lions on Saturday continued at Ballymore yesterday, as the players and coaches went into a conclave to formulate a united approach to Queensland's remaining four games against the Blues, Brumbies, Crusaders and Hurricanes.

For all the outrage swirling through the admittedly dwindling ranks of the Queensland rugby faithful, cooler heads will prevail and there will be no late-season purge. Phil Mooney, whose record stands at five wins and a draw from 22 matches, was given a ringing endorsement yesterday by Queensland Rugby Union chairman Peter Lewis, who insisted the organisation was 100 per cent behind the Reds' head coach and the bold brand of rugby he is attempting to implement.

"I've spoken to Phil at length and told him, 'We're right behind you, so just get on with your job'," Lewis said yesterday.

While the prevailing custom is to blame the coach for just about everything that goes wrong on the field -- as Waratahs' boss Chris Hickey would readily attest -- the reality is that Mooney simply cannot put old heads on young shoulders. It is not as though he has not drummed into his players the importance of trusting each other as they build an attack, it's just they haven't been listening.

Whether that translates into a bloody selection meeting today depends on which Mooney one listens to, the emotional Mooney who threatened wholesale changes in the immediate aftermath of the 20-31 loss to the Lions or the cool-headed Mooney who, on the morning after, was wheeling away the guillotine.

Certainly he is not planning to strip Wallabies second-rower James Horwill of the captaincy, even though the Reds have lost all four matches under him since his return against the Chiefs.

Interestingly, the last game the Reds played under Berrick Barnes's captaincy, against the Sharks, saw them at their very best.

"Not at this stage," said Mooney, when asked about the possibility of Barnes regaining the captaincy. "The fact that James is captain is not the root of the problem. Certainly there's an opportunity for him to look at aspects of his leadership style and an opportunity for other players to shoulder some of the load.
"But he's 23 and lately it's been a case of a young captain trying to do too much. He has been focusing on broader things than just his own game."

Horwill was nothing short of inspirational last year, so much so that his name was even bandied around as a future Australia captain. But he has struggled to assert himself to the same degree this year after missing the first half of the Reds' campaign while he completed his recovery from off-season foot surgery.

Mooney, meanwhile, insisted All Black flanker Daniel Braid still has an important role to play at the Reds despite having played his last game for them after snapping an achilles tendon. Certainly he will have a significant role to play this week in developing the Reds' strategy against his old team, the Blues, in Albany on Saturday.

Test winger Peter Hynes is rated only a 50-50 chance of playing (knee injury).


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...015651,00.html