Match Centre: Rebels 20-26 Brumbies
Rebels 20-26 Brumbies, AAMI Park
Scorecard
Brumbies managed to return back to winning ways as they edged out Melbourne Rebels in the ninth round of Super Rugby AU at AAMI Park on Sunday.
This is sixth win for Brumbies from eight games as they consolidated their second position with 29 points - three behind top-placed Queensland Reds while Rebels are at fourth place with 12 points.
Brumbies got the proceedings in the ninth minute when hooker James Hanson dived from close range for the opening try and Matt Toomua followed with the conversion.
The 17th minute saw Rebels reduced to 14 players temporarily with Marika Koroibete sin-binned for repeated infringements and from the resulting line out Rory Scott went over and a conversion from Ryan Lonergan helped Brumbies levelled the scores.
As Rebels returned to full strength, they lost their second player to yellow card with this time Trevor Hosea sin-binned for an offside and Brumbies continued to punish them with tries from Cadeyrn Neville and Tom Wright taking them to a 7-19 lead at the end of the opening half.
The home side scored the first try in the second half with this time Campbell Magnay set the pace running 50m before offloading to Joe Powell, who touched down and Toomua followed with the conversion and a penalty to bring the gap down to two points.
Bayley Kuenzle restored nine point lead for Brumbies with his try in the corner in the 53rd minute after Scott capitalised on the loose ball and made an inside pass to the inside centre. Toomua with his second penalty kick in the 72nd minute brought Rebels close but with no further breakthrough, Brumbies went on to complete a six-point victory to register their sixth win.
Team line up:
Rebels: 15 Tom Pincus, 14 Frank Lomani, 13 Stacey Ili, 12 Campbell Magnay, 11 Marika Koroibete, 10 Matt To'omua, 9 Joe Powell, 8 Michael Wells, 7 Richard Hardwick, 6 Joshua Kemeny, 5 Trevor Hosea, 4 Robert Leota, 3 Pone Faamausili, 2 James Hanson, 1 Matt Gibbon
Reserves: 16 Jordan Uelese, 17 Cabous Eloff, 18 Cameron Orr, 19 Lucio Sordoni, 20 Ross Haylett-Petty, 21 Isi Naisarani, 22 Brad Wilkin, 23 James Tuttle, 24 Lewis Holland, 25 Glen Vaihu.
Brumbies: 15 Tom Banks, 14 Andy Muirhead, 13 Len Ikitau, 12 Bayley Kuenzle, 11 Tom Wright, 10 Noah Lolesio, 9 Ryan Lonergan, 8 Rob Valetini, 7 Rory Scott, 6 James Tucker, 5 Cadeyrn Neville, 4 Darcy Swain, 3 Allan Alaalatoa, 2 Folau Fainga'a, 1 Scott Sio
Reserves: 16 Lachlan Lonergan, 17 James Slipper, 18 Tom Ross, 19 Nick Frost, 20 Will Miller, 21 Nic White, 22 Reesjan Pasitoa, 23 Mack Hansen
