The Highlanders couldn\u2019t handle the heat in Brisbane, going down to the Reds 31-14 on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Suncorp Stadium is a bogey ground for the Southern Men who\u2019ve only won there four times in 30 years of Super Rugby.<\/p>\n
The Reds were coming off a bye and looked a lot more fresh in the warm and humid conditions than the Highlanders, who had tough games against the Crusaders and Chiefs to start the season.<\/p>\n
A slick try to Reds captain Fraser McReight opened the scoring for the home team in the 18th minute.<\/p>\n
Ten minutes later they had another to hooker Matt Faessler from a line-out drive to make it 12-nil.<\/p>\n
The Highlanders were able to reply quickly following a burst from the ruck by hooker Jack Taylor who put impressive halfback Adam Lennox over.<\/p>\n
But the Reds scored a third try through speedster Tim Ryan to take a deserved 19-7 lead into the break.<\/p>\n
Needing to score first in the second-half to stay in the match, the Highlanders did exactly that through 22 year-old number eight Lucas Casey, barging through defenders to narrow the deficit to just five points.<\/p>\n
The Reds were able to finish over the top though with two more tries as the Highlanders fell off 31 tackles in the match.<\/p>\n
Captain Timoci Tavanawai admits they were off their game.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, just frustrated eh,\u201d Tavatavanawai told Sky Sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe come here expected for a win, expect a lot from the boys but I\u2019ll take it on the chin as a leadership group we didn\u2019t really execute what we come here for.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Highlanders now return to Dunedin for a round four clash against the Force who were too good for Moana Pasifika, winning 35-19 in Pukekohe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Highlanders couldn\u2019t handle the heat in Brisbane, going down to the Reds 31-14 on Friday night. Suncorp…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-508104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}