The key area that helped Reds beat Blues

REACTION: Queensland Reds coach Les Kiss praised his team’s “energy and effort” after they piled more misery on Super Rugby champions Blues with a convincing 35-21 win.

The victory in Brisbane on Friday was built on the back of two converted tries from flyhalf Tom Lynagh and some stoic defence.

It snapped a two-game losing streak and left the Reds entrenched in the top four with five matches left in the regular season.

In contrast, the Blues, who were dominant in their march to the title last year, have won just three from 10 this year and are flailing outside the play-off places.

Kiss, who is shaping as favourite to take over as Wallabies coach when Joe Schmidt departs after the Rugby Championship this year, said their work on defensive tactics during the week paid dividends.

“We denied them for a long time so defensively we had some excellent moments when it really mattered,” he said.

“We certainly worked on some areas of our ‘D’ since our last game [a loss to the Brumbies] that paid off.

“Those big ‘E’ words, effort and energy, were certainly way up and our aerial kicking caused a bit of havoc. Very happy,” he added.

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Lynagh, who is gunning to be the Wallabies No.10 when the British and Irish Lions tour in June-July-August, pulled the strings with 20 points.

The livewire 22-year-old crossed twice in the opening 10 minutes to put the hosts in the driving seat and the Blues, who were missing All Blacks Dalton Papali’i and Caleb Clarke, struggled to recover.

New Zealand wing Mark Tele’a’s first-half red-card for a dangerous tackle compounded their woes and skipper Patrick Tuipulotu could only praise the Reds.

“They played physically and outplayed us right from the get-go,” he told reporters.

“We struggled, put a lot of pressure on us, especially at set-piece and we couldn’t really get back into it consistently.”