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BRISBANE - New Queensland coach Phil Mooney has quickly dismissed talk of tomorrow night's Super 14 opener against the unfancied Highlanders being an early battle for the wooden-spoon.
With the Reds finishing last in 2007 and the Highlanders lacking any All Blacks, some believe the two teams were vying for wooden-spoon favouritism at Suncorp Stadium.
The Highlanders are rank outsiders at $151 with Australian bookmakers to win the competition and second favourites for the wooden spoon at $2.75, just behind the Johannesburg-based Lions ($2.65).
The Reds - aiming to make their record last-start 92-3 loss to the championship-winning Bulls a distant memory - are $51 for the title and $8 to finish last.
Those odds would worsen dramatically with a first-up loss at home where victory is crucial to playoff hopes and regaining lost respect.
But Mooney, who has set the semifinals as his team's season goal, rated both sides as "smokeys" in the 13-round competition.
The Highlanders have lost cornerstone front rowers Carl Hayman and Anton Oliver to foreign clubs but showed they could surprise with a 42-21 trial win over the Blues last week.
"They're a very physical side and history shows New Zealand has wonderful depth," Mooney said.
"You take teams lightly at your peril, that's something we're not going to do with the Highlanders.
"We think they're the smokeys of the competition."
Mooney today named a full-strength side but lopped whiz-kid Quade Cooper off the bench, making veteran utility Andrew Walker the first five-eighth back-up to Berrick Barnes.
Cooper's surprise cut came on the same day the Australian Rugby Union and New South Wales extended the contract of his 2006 Australian Schoolboys teammate Kurtley Beale.
The youngster will now play for the Queensland Academy against NSW's juniors in Sydney on Saturday with a brief to improve his game control.
"He didn't get a lot of time in the trials and when he did he overplayed his hand a little bit," Mooney said.
"We want a bit more control and Andrew Walker gives us that for this match, as well as his goalkicking and general-play kicking."
Winger Digby Ioane will make his Reds debut three years after he suffered a season-ending trial injury as a teenager at Ballymore.
Prize recruit Ioane was today cleared to play his first match for the Reds after recovering from pre-season knee surgery.
New coach Phil Mooney has given the one-test Wallabies flyer a roving commission after luring him back home from the Western Force.
His only previous appearance in a Reds jersey finished in disaster in 2005 thanks to a serious knee injury in a pre-season win over the Brumbies.
The rebuilding Highlanders also have a new coach in Glen Moore and will rely heavily on halfback Jimmy Cowan, their only player with test experience.
They have uncapped duo Daniel Bowden and Steven Setephano at five-eighth and No. 8 and will miss injured trio Craig Newby, Hoani MacDonald and Aaron Bancroft.
- AAP
