Reds' coach Richard Graham will be happy the bye has finally arrived after the Brumbies kept the Reds pointless in their forward dominated match-up in Brisbane. While the Brumbies were packed full of Wallaby stars, the Reds were struggling to field a team with their injury list full of Super Rugby stars including James O'Connor and Lachie Turner, and saw an addition added before the game even started with Ben Daley sidelined early with a shoulder injury.

The Brumbies have maintained their position on top of the Australian conference and have now won four of their past five matches and while their backline may not have found the space they wanted, their forward pack were huge as they hammered the Reds scrum and found their way to the line for three of the Brumbies tries.

While the scoreline shows a complete Burmbies whitewash, the Reds held strong for much of the match, but with little attacking punch, they struggled to find any momentum when they had the ball and slowly ran out of options when taking on the line.

Following another loss Richard Graham is sure to be facing the firing squad but with the Reds facing the bye week, Graham may have some breathing space.

"The first thing is giving the group that have been working for those five weeks a bit of a break, both physically and mentally, but certainly for us it's a good time to regroup - we get about seven or eight guys back as we lead into the Lions game here at home," Graham said following the match. "Really it's just the fundamentals, the way we want to play the game, certainly just the execution from the opportunities that we found tonight.

"Likely," Graham said of the Quade Cooper and James O'Connor selection. "It would have been nice to see a line-up through these early stages, but the good thing is being able to create a really competitive environment there, which I think selection does that. I think in this point in time I've had one conversation with the player in the first five rounds not selected playing in the team. We'll address that over the next period of time with all those guys coming back, look forward to obviously the next five round block."

A scoreless game until the 19th minutes, the Reds and Brumbies fought it out in an upfront battle until Brumbies captain Stephen Moore found the chalk for the first of four Brumbies tries. Ben Alexander soon found the line for the first of his double, but an off night from Christian Leali'ifano saw the Reds stay close in the match as they attempted to muscle up and throw the ball around.

Keeping it to 10-0 at the half-time break, the Reds were quickly put under pressure again, and a yellow card to Liam Gill resulted in Ben Alexander finding his second try. The Brumbies continued to add to the Reds woes with a stray Moore knee to James Horwill's head saw the lock head off for a concussion test while Brumbies' No. 8 Ita Vaea found the line.

Continuing to fight hard, the Reds had one last chance in the final minutes to redeem themselves with some points, and a Nick Frisby grubber kick ahead for Adam Thomson seemed like the Reds were finally over the line, but handling errors continued to hamper their game and were left disheartened.

The Brumbies win sets up a tantalising blockbuster with the reining champion Waratahs in Sydney next weekend.