Brumbies reign over Queensland Reds but sweat on Noah Lolesio in Super Rugby thriller

Lolesio suffered an ankle injury early in the second half of the Brumbies thrilling 16-12 win over the Reds in front of 8495 fans at Canberra Stadium on Friday night.

But Brumbies coach Dan McKellar is confident the flyhalf will be a chance to face the Western Force in Perth next week, hopeful the injury is "minor".

Samoan Test playmaker Rodney Iona was tasked with closing a game out against a side which had made a habit of breaking the Brumbies' hearts. He was a late call-up to begin with, only drafted into the squad after Chris Feauai-Sautia suffered a hamstring injury at training on Wednesday.

Iona entered the fray at the 48-minute mark. Little more than four minutes later the Brumbies lost Jahrome Brown to a head knock and the home side were walking wounded. A few minutes after that? Darcy Swain saw yellow.

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A glance at the scoreboard would have been enough to make any Brumbies fan nervous as the clock wound down. A 16-12 lead mirrored the margin in last year's Super Rugby AU final, and we all know how that played out.

The sight of referee Damon Murphy holding his arm out to signal advantage and tucking it back in before Queensland launched a counter deep inside the Brumbies' red zone in the dying moments would be enough to cause all sorts of nightmares in Canberra.

A ball came loose soon after Murphy appeared to signal advantage, toed ahead by Reds captain Fraser McReight who suggests he was held back in the chase by Iona as the Brumbies playmaker won the race to the ball.

The Brumbies held on, and remain on top of the Super Rugby Pacific ladder as the competition's last unbeaten team standing.

"I know everyone else would be thinking 'oh God, here we go again', I wasn't thinking about that. If we had have lost, we would have beaten ourselves, that's what I was thinking," McKellar said.

"The scrum battle was tough, we made some really good shifts there. It was scrum, maul, someone would go down injured or there'd be a break in play. The game just never really got going.

"I don't want to sit here and be like the wet mop because I hate people being negative about the game. What were the good things? The scrum. There were some really good parts to our defence, we're having to do a lot of defending but we're having to do a lot of defending because we can't maintain possession and we're inaccurate, and not as clinical in areas of the game as we normally are."

The Reds were outsiders with Tate McDermott, Lukhan Salakaia-Loto, Angus Scott-Young and Alex Mafi all missing. Gone were key pieces of their attack, lineout and scrum.

But the Brumbies were made to work. In the first half they held 37 per cent of the ball and made almost five times as many tackles as their opposition.

"Physically, I'm bloody rooted. That was that game. We said before the game the forwards would have to roll their sleeves up understanding the scrum was their pride and joy," Brumbies captain Allan Alaalatoa said.

"That was something we wanted to stop and we did well. The positive thing is we're going to be hard on ourselves throughout this review, but then again we came away with the win."

So much had been written of the rivalry Australian rugby needs.

"We've played some classics with the Reds," McKellar said. "But that wasn't one."

AT A GLANCE

Super Rugby Pacific round five: ACT BRUMBIES 16 (Tom Wright try; Noah Lolesio conversion; Lolesio, Nic White, Ryan Lonergan penalties) bt QUEENSLAND REDS 12 (James O'Connor, Josh Nasser tries; O'Connor conversion) at Canberra Stadium.

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