The Reds have received a major boost in their bid to string together consecutive victories for the first time since 2006, with Wallabies pair Digby Ioane and Peter Hynes set to return from injury for their side's Super 14 clash against the Western Force at Suncorp Stadium on Sunday.
The inclusion of Ioane (knee) and Hynes (dislocated finger), who both missed the Brisbane-based franchise's upset 23-18 win over the Chiefs in Hamilton last weekend, has forced Reds coach Ewen McKenzie to shuffle his backline.
Most notably, McKenzie has shifted Ioane from the wing back to outside centre, where he displaces former Wallaby Morgan Turinui who was one of the Reds' strongest performers in the shock win over the Chiefs.
McKenzie also handed raw lock Rob Simmons a run-on debut at the expense of Adam Byrnes, and made no apologies for changing a winning formula after his side's impressive performance in New Zealand.
"Just by naming the same team every week, complacency can creep in - we want to keep everyone on their toes," McKenzie said.
"Simmo coming in to the second row is an example of that, we're not unhappy with Adam Byrnes at all."
"It is also about managing the workload of players."
"He (Byrnes) has carried a fair workload, he's an industrious player on the field but we have the opportunity to freshen him up a bit."
"We clearly need to become more consistent and that's why we're not just rolling out the same team and being happy with what we've done so far."
"We have to take some risks to do better."
The Reds, traditionally the most serial of underachievers amongst the four Australian sides, have started their season brightly with surprise wins over NZ powerhouses the Chiefs and the Crusaders.
Conversely the Force are yet to register a win this campaign and remain anchored to the bottom of the Super 14 ladder.
McKenzie was not interested in pats on the back after just two wins and added his charges would not be underestimating the Force, most notably because of the loss they suffered when the two teams met in a pre-season trial match this year.
The former Waratahs coach declared the derby match would be one of the Reds' toughest for the season.
"They are all pretty competent players and if you do your head count they have more international players running around in their side than we have," he said.
"You can't be fooled by their ladder position, they've had three games and they've been in all of them up until the last 15 minutes."
"They have been quite competitive in all their games ... and they've been playing desperate and hard rugby the whole year."
"They're not inferior and they are a difficult team to play...history tells us they've had good and substantial wins over us, and they obviously beat us in a trial a month and a half ago, so there's no reason we'd be taking them lightly."