Coach Les Kiss has heralded the Queensland Reds’ mental toughness after they upset the Crusaders 31-26 to end a 15-year hoodoo in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
Queensland went into the Super Rugby Pacific clash last night having conceded 94 points in their last two games, putting them on the brink of the competition’s top six.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Having only won once in their last 15 encounters, with their last victory at home coming in the 2011 Super Rugby grand final, the Reds were underdogs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Crusaders were also looking to become the first side in Super Rugby history to score 50 or more points in three consecutive games.<\/p>\n
Also, Reds’ star playmaker Tom Lynagh was ill for the clash where they knew a victory would propel them seven points above the seventh-placed Highlanders.<\/p>\n
“There’s mental toughness that we see from the team. Fraser (McReight) and the boys were super honest with themselves last week,” Kiss said as the Reds suffered a 42-19 thumping against the Force in the last round. <\/p>\n
“There was no big crisis or anything. It was just being pragmatic, talking about what we can do to be better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We weren’t far off on a lot of things, but we had to make sure we made amends tonight.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t neat and tidy, but there were some worthy moments, some worthy attitudes and worthy mindsets that stood up when it mattered.”<\/p>\n
Lynagh is expected to return after Queensland’s bye, although another star playmaker Carter Gordon will have to await scans for a possible knee injury after coming off second best in a tackle on Saturday. <\/p>\n
One player that Kiss won’t have to worry about is Filipo Daugunu after he ran for 120 metres and scored a crucial late try in his 100th competition appearance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“He is a competitive bug, and what I liked at the end of the game tonight was that he was spent, which meant he invested big time and heavily into that (game),” Kiss said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That’s not a one-off thing he’s done. He keeps putting his hand up in the big, physical moments, and it helps us for sure.”<\/p>\n
Captain McReight added he feels Daugunu is a star as the 20-cap Wallaby pushes for a starting jersey ahead of next year’s World Cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“How good is he? He’s reserved and quiet as well,” McReight said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“He could also be there without you knowing he’s there, which is just pretty special. He goes about his business extremely well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coach Les Kiss has heralded the Queensland Reds’ mental toughness after they upset the Crusaders 31-26 to end…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[56380,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-375898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-crusaders","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}