Rebels head coach Dave Wessels made just the one change to the side to face the Reds at Brookvale on Friday 10 July @11:05 SA Time. The Rebels lost against the Brumbies (23-32) and the Reds have beaten the Waratahs (32-26) last weekend.
The promotion of Magnay sees Reece Hodge shifts to the bench in a move designed to manage the workload of the Wallaby super boot.
“Campbell is coming back from a long injury layoff and Hodgey had some injuries before the break, so it’s probably just more of a case of managing both their loads,” explained Wessels at his team announcement.
“They’ve both had a huge workload over the last couple of weeks and both will be important to us during this campaign, so we’re fortunate they’re both really good players.
“Campbell brings something a bit different to Hodgey in terms of his size and physicality and Hodgey will certainly see a fair bit of time at the back end of the game, so we need both those options.”
“We felt we finished the COVID period with some real cohesion as a group – we had a great win in Dunedin and a good win against the Lions to finish, but that wasn’t anything like we saw on Saturday night.
“It’s been a pretty disruptive ten days for the group but what we have to do is play better on Friday. I don’t think the opposition matters to us at this point - we just want to play better as a team, and we know we can beat anyone in this comp when we play well.”
One area of play that has the coach enthusiastic is the scrum, after his men performance against the highly fancied Brumbies pack in Canberra on Saturday night.
“We had four guys all starting debuts in that pack – for half the pack that was new together, I thought it was a great achievement and certainly towards the end of the game we had more debutants, so we were pleased about that.
“Our scrum doesn’t get a good wrap in the media but the statistics around our scrum have been strong for a long period, so it’s not a part of the game where we don’t think we can dominate the opposition.”
Rebels: 1. Matt Gibbon, 2. Jordan Uelese, 3. Pone Fa’amausili, 4. Matt Philip, 5. Michael Stolberg, 6. Josh Kemeny, 7. Richard Hardwick, 8. Michael Wells (VC), 9. Ryan Louwrens, 10. Matt To’omua (VC), 11. Marika Koroibete, 12. Billy Meakes, 13. Campbell Magnay, 14. Andrew Kellaway, 15. Dane Haylett-Petty Replacements: 16. Efi Ma'afu, 17. Cameron Orr, 18. Jermaine Ainsley, 19. Trevor Hosea, 20. Esei Ha'angana, 21. Rob Leota, 22. Frank Lomani, 23. Reece Hodge