Starting the Season “Wright”: An Interview with Reds Captain Liam “Wrongaz” Wright

Super Rugby Australia is back!!!!!! Finally, the COVID induced rugby hiatus has come to an end. Last Friday we got to watch live footy down at Suncorp and the Reds didn’t disappoint! Not only did the Queensland Reds win, they broke the seven year drought against New South Wales, bringing home the Bob Templeton cup. It was an awesome night, everyone felt “COVID safe” and the win 32-26 win felt good.

A good size crowd enjoyed being back at Suncorp last week!

In the lead up to round two’s game, I was lucky to get the opportunity to interview Liam Wright. We spoke about last weeks match, and Liam gave a bit of a recap of the last four months. We maintained our social distancing guidelines using the trusty Zoom app. Luckily for you, you can be a part of our conversation and stay socially distanced at the same time!

Hey Liam, thanks for taking time to catch up!

Pleasure, thank you for having me!

How have you been? It’s been four months since I last saw you and the team down at Ballymore. What a crazy four months it’s been!

It has - it’s been really crazy! We’ve been good. We’ve been doing a fair bunch of training, no real time off, even in isolation. We’ve just had a bunch of programs and stuff to be doing, but now that we’re all back together, everyone’s just pretty hyped to be around each other and hanging out and playing footy again. So we’re doing pretty good at the moment.

It was such a good game on Friday last week. Of course, I loved being back at Suncorp! And what a great win!

It was brilliant! Yeah it was so good being back at Suncorp and having all our Reds fans cheering us on. We could hear you guys on the sidelines, so it made it a lot easier to play for us and against New South Wales was a big game for us. We were glad we got the win and we thought that was the best way to show our appreciation. We were glad we got the job done on Friday.

How did it feel scoring the first try in the game?

Haha it felt really good. It just sort of opened up for me, Taity put me through a good hole. I don’t score too many tries in my time, so it was nice to get on the board. It was just a good way to start us off I think, to get the first points on the board and just to calm our heads a little bit. I was pretty happy to get over the line.

How did it feel holding up the Bob Templeton cup after the game?

It was good to be back in the stands at Suncorp on Friday

Yeah, that felt awesome. It’s pretty much our first trophy together as a group, in the Super Rugby squad, so it felt really good. It’s been a long time since the Templeton cup was back in Queensland, it’s been 7 years, 11 games or something, so we really, really wanted that. It felt good just presenting it to the crowd and seeing how much it meant to them as well, we put a lot of pride in our jersey. Yeah it was an awesome experience.

We are playing the Melbourne Rebels in Sydney tomorrow night. What do you think the team needs to do to get the win?

Um, we have a fair bit to work on. We won the game last week, but it really wasn’t that pretty. We lost our momentum in that second half, I think it’ll be important to us to really come out and start strong. Even in the games before Covid, we’ve been leading out at half time about six or seven times I think and then we didn’t really go on and finish the job a lot of the time. So we’ve been trying to train how to mentally switch ourselves on after a little break, putting the breaks on at training and then coming back out and then start strong. 

So I think that’ll be important for us, as well as fixing up little bits in our set-piece. If our scrum stays strong and we get our line-out sorted, we can give our backs some really quality ball and we all know what they can do with good ball. I think that’ll be the main thing for us.

Can we talk about the last four months… What did you do to keep busy during isolation?

Yeah like I said, there was a fair bit of training. We all went into the Ballymore gym and raided it and took bits and pieces home to get the gym work done, so everyone would have their little bit of Ballymore with them at home. We were still able to go out to our local clubs, I went down to Easts a fair bit and that’s where I did all my running and stuff.

So there was a lot of training to keep us busy and we had a few Zoom calls and tried to wrap up the first seven games, call and end to that so we could really move on. We did a few a few season reviews and stuff like that.

Otherwise, my roommate was off with me as well, Covid’s affected a lot of other people… so we were hanging out a lot. He taught me how to drive manual, so that was pretty awesome, having the time to do that. I’m doing uni as well, so I got a subject out of the way... did a bit of reading and stuff like that.

It was a pretty enjoyable time to just work on yourself a bit. But I was pretty glad once it was over as well and be back with the boys playing footy.

I know you had small training groups. How did you keep in touch with the rest of the team during the lockdowns?

Yeah, it was a bit weird. We were sort of away from each other. We’d sometimes bump into each other when we’d train down at Easts... I saw Jardy a few times down there, he’d be running down there at the same time as me, I did a bit of training with Blythey and that, but otherwise, we’ve got our group Whatsapp which was pretty popular. All the boys were sending photos of what they’re doing, still throwing a bit of banter at each other. It’s a pretty close group, so to be apart from each other was a bit weird.

Even when we came back, we were in small groups of ten like you said Tommy, based on the “return to play” protocols. So WhatsApp was pretty big for us, just to staying in contact, sending pics, what we’re doing over the weekend, you know, if we’re having a beer or if we’re playing some golf, a bit of competition thrown in there as well.. and then obviously some Zoom meetings with the coaches and doing some rugby learning at the same time.

We saw each other, mainly through socials, but we contacted each other a lot.

Who was the biggest team joker during the lockdown?

[Laughs]. That one’s not really up for debate. It had to be Lukhan or Wilso. Those guys are just clowns. They constantly try to get a laugh from people. If we hadn’t heard from someone too much, they’d call them out and throw some chat their way. Our media guys as well, Tom Mitchell, he was busy during the time, making a Reds podcast, he was getting the inside scoop in what the boys were doing… he created the “fast-5” where we got to name who was the most uncoordinated in the group and stuff like that.

Lukhan and Wilso were pretty busy in the WhatsApp. 

What was the consensus on who was the most uncoordinated?

He wasn’t happy about it, but it was Blythy [Angus Blythe]. He copped it a few times.

What’s your message to Reds fans right now?

Thank you! Thank you for sticking with us. It’s been a really tumultuous couple of months, but we constantly hear the support through social media, when we bump into them around the place, they were really loud in that regard. We can always feel the support and the trust and the connection that we tried to build during the off season, with “Reds to regions”, we really wanted to reengage our fans and get them believing in us and the pride we have in our jersey.

So just a massive thank you, to all you Reds fans. Because now the seasons back, we get to really see you and celebrate with you and hopefully raise a few more trophies with you guys. That goes a long way in pushing us to be our best.

Thank you very much Liam for taking the time to catch up today, it’s definitely appreciated!

No drama! Thanks guys! Thanks for the support. Best rugby writer out there I reckon.

The Reds take on the Melbourne Rebels at the Brookvale Oval in Sydney, tonight (July 11th) at 7:05pm.