Watch every second of the 2026 Super Rugby Pacific season live and on demand via Stan Sport.<\/a><\/p>\nYet skipper Matt Philip insists neither the chance to impress Queensland’s incoming Wallabies coach Les Kiss or backing up a 36-12 first-round win over the Reds last month are driving the Waratahs.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to think about the past results against the Hurricanes or the Reds,” Philip said.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to take anything from round one. They’ve also got players back as well. They’re a bit of a different team.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got a different line-up. It’s at their home ground this time, so it’s a clean slate.”<\/p>\n
The 31-capped Wallaby was blunt when asked on the importance of playing well to earn a call-up to the national team, saying “that’s not the motivation here”.<\/p>\n
Instead, the key motivation for the Tahs will be bouncing back from their humiliating 59-19 thrashing by the Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
“We weren’t up to standard last week and we look to rectify that this weekend,” Philip said.<\/p>\n
“We had some tough conversations at the start of the week, deserved conversations. Now I think we’re in a really good place to perform tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
For Queensland, they have turned things around since a round-one loss to NSW, coming into the re-match with fine form after a hard-fought 34-31 win against the ACT Brumbies in Canberra.<\/p>\n
Reds captain Fraser McReight is raring to go for what he believes is a true grudge match.<\/p>\n
“It’s Queensland versus NSW, it doesn’t get much better than that, “McReight said.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of old foes in the Tahs team, whether it’s mates or people we have a lot of history with.”<\/p>\n
The skipper is wary of the dangerous Waratahs after the Reds have lost their past two match-ups with their arch rivals.<\/p>\n
“We know they’re going to be deadly,” McReight said.<\/p>\n
“We’re cautious of them because they’re a great side and, obviously they didn’t have the performance they wanted last weekend, but they’re definitely going to come out swinging.”<\/p>\n
Undoubtedly, the Suncorp Stadium crowd will be a boisterous force cheering on their team, something McReight is incredibly grateful for.<\/p>\n
“Thousands of Queenslanders having your back out there is pretty special,” McReight said.<\/p>\n
“As a player on the field, you can hear them so loud … it feels like you have a 16th man out there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NSW Waratahs claim fighting for Wallabies spots won’t be a factor as they chase redemption in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,32951,12061,760,85],"class_list":["post-538974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nsw-waratahs","tag-queensland-reds","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538974","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=538974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}