LONG READ Donaldson's tour de Force gave future Wallabies coach Les Kiss plenty to ponder

In a short round of rugby, with just three games of Super Rugby Pacific on a long weekend, two things can be simultaneously true: it doesn’t take as much to stand out, and those moments probably stand out more than they otherwise would.

While it’s hard to overstate the performances of the Crusaders, Chiefs and Western Force in recording dominant bonus-point wins over the weekend, they also stood out because there was little else over the weekend to bring them down.

The Crusaders were always going to be motivated for Codie Taylor’s 150th game and the last hurrah for Apollo Projects Stadium, the temporary set-up on the old Rugby League Park in Christchurch used for the past 15 years. The Crusaders will now move into the shiny new and ultra-impressive One NZ Stadium, a mere few blocks from the Christchurch CBD, in the next few weeks. The Chiefs similarly needed a strong win at home to silence a few questions being asked of them in recent weeks, after the early competition favourites had slipped from second to sixth in the standings.

All those boxes were ticked on the New Zealand leg of the round, which put all eyes on the Queensland Reds-Western Force Australian derby in Brisbane on Saturday night. And the outcome was not on too many bingo cards. Among the many standout performers in the Force’s super impressive bonus-point win over the Reds was fly-half Ben Donaldson, and talk about picking your moments beautifully.

Here he was, in front of the Wallabies coach-elect, going head-to-head with everyone’s presumptive Australian No.10 Carter Gordon, and Donaldson delivered an absolute masterclass in playmaking and game management as the Western Force completed their most comprehensive win in several seasons.

In the discussion about form Wallaby fly-halves, the overwhelming consensus had the Reds’ Gordon ahead of rising Brumbies fly-half Declan Meredith, with Donaldson trailing both of them but well ahead of the rest.

With this effort, Donaldson extended his lead on the Super Rugby Player of the Year standings and had his hand in most of the highlight reel moments, as the Force clinically disposed of a disappointingly lacklustre Reds outfit. Donaldson passed and kicked beautifully, directing the Force to exactly where they needed to play the game and supported all the team’s great work in scoring six tries by keeping a perfect record from the kicking tee.

Whereas plenty of teams are still playing off nine in 2026, the Force are very clearly playing one pass wider off Donaldson at first receiver, and he varies the width of play from there with his short and longer passing game.

The result was a Queensland defence that showed signs of fatigue by half-time as the Force varied their width and committed defenders to tackles that were then beaten by offloads. The Reds finished the night making and missing more than twice as many tackles as the Force, and with the Force dominating possession and throwing a hundred more passes.

The timing of Donaldson’s display simply can’t have been lost on Les Kiss, who quietly dragged off Gordon on the hour, while Meredith watched on with the Brumbies enjoying a long weekend bye.

If Donaldson was the Force’s best player in a pretty hot field, his main challenge to any player of the match voting would surely have been the big Argentinean lock, Franco Molina, who finished the game with 73 metres from 14 carries and beating five defenders, to run in three memorable tries in 72 minutes.

Molina was also instrumental in the Force winning all 19 of their own lineout throws and stealing three of Queensland’s while standing in for the recovering Jeremy Williams, creating the best kind of selection headache for coach Simon Cron.

From an Australian rugby perspective, what is the best compliment we can give Molina? To politely ask whether or not he has a local Australia grandparent. Yes, there would be the small matter of him playing the last of his 20 Tests for Los Pumas only last November, but surely sitting out the required period to switch allegiance would be something Molina would do to please his new-found Aussie gran?!

Joking aside, Molina was simply outstanding for the Force in their 42-19 win and produced exactly the performance that has been lacking in the Reds forwards for the last few weeks. If Molina can find more displays like that, the Force will have a lot more of a say for the rest of the campaign.

By contrast, Queensland desperately need a couple of big Molina-like performances from their own pack. In the last month or so, even in games they’ve won, the Reds’ Achilles heel has been on full display for teams happy to take them head-on at the breakdown. The Force simply replicated the same plan, impacting the speed and effectiveness of the Reds ruck, and similarly lessoned the threat of the Queensland back row.

But while the Reds may have averaged more ground per carry than the Force did, most of their metres made came in the wider channels or from line breaks. The top 20 carriers for the game contained only five Reds, with Lukhan Salakaia-Loto and Seru Uru the only forwards.

Conversely, all the starting forward pack bar hooker Josh Nasser made double-digit tackles: Matt Faessler, who came on for Nasser after 28 minutes, still made 11 tackles in less than an hour. Clearly, the variable width the Force played with, and the sheer volume of carries they made, took so much out of the Reds pack defensively, to the point that their collective go-forward was nowhere to be seen.

Along with the lowest points and tries tally of the top nine teams in the competition, this lack of go-forward is an issue for Kiss in both his current job, and especially his future job.

If his current team can’t contain opposition at the breakdown, and are lacking go-forward where it needs to be made through the middle channels, what sort of confidence are Wallabies fans supposed to take out of the Reds’ Super Rugby form at the moment?

As you know, a week is a long time in rugby. The Waratahs found that out the hard way over the course of 80 minutes against the Chiefs in Hamilton.

Only the week before, skipper Matt Philip was lauding his team’s true 80-minute performance to beat the ACT Brumbies in Canberra for the first time in nine starts, lamenting too many 40-50-60 minute showings this season which had allowed opposition teams to run over them.

But the Waratahs’ showing in Canberra soon felt like an anomaly in their season with the Chiefs 30-7 up inside 50 minutes, as bad luck, silly mistakes and poor decisions once again became the order of the Tahs’ night.

Before that Brumbies game, NSW recalled Andrew Kellaway and went to a 6-2 bench, and the result suggests something obviously worked.

But now, after Saturday’s heavy loss to the Chiefs and with more rotation, I’m really not sure what levers NSW have left to pull. They desperately need to get out of this cycle of only being able to win one game in a row. The question is, with their season almost certainly on the line after a bye this weekend, have they got anything left to find that missing spark?