Rugby News, Irish Rugby,
Lions tour, Aviva stadium, International rugby news
Enough of this already. The
Lions spoke of last Saturday in Hong Kong having set a marker which had to be
bettered and strictly speaking it was; the 52-point winning margin eclipsing
the victory over the Barbarians by a point and against more spirited, if less
talented, opposition who played for the full 80. Yet two matches in there’s
still a strong whiff of a phoney war going on.
On the Lions last tour here
a dozen years ago, they ran up a century against Western Australia in the WACA
and scored 241 points in their first three games before being mugged by
Australia A in game four.
For all the talk about
“concentrating on ourselves”, in the aftermath of this facile win Warren
Gatland betrayed a first hint of frustration when referring to the 2009 tour to
South Africa when the Lions won their opening six matches before losing the
first Test.
“Ideally, we would like to
be playing against the strongest sides that we possibly can, and if we can’t
then we are going to have to replicate some of it in training. It’s something
we learnt from 2009.
“We arrived at that first
Test against South Africa thinking we were in pretty good nick, and it was a
big step up. I don’t think we will get caught this time. We’ve just got to be
aware of the opposition we are playing, and if we do have victories like
tonight we don’t get too carried away with it.
“I think there is something
special and unique about Lions tours,” he added. “You have got to embrace it.
The amount of rugby it is going to generate for Australian rugby, they need to
take it seriously.”
Tougher game
Gatland anticipated a
tougher game in the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane and that will assuredly be the
case.
The Queensland Reds include
Wallabies call-ups Will Genia, James Horwill and the brilliant Liam Gill. But
it is a 55,000 sell-out already for a game being billed as Quade Cooper’s last
chance to force his way into the Wallabies’ squad, though the likelihood
remains James O’Connor or the “focused” Kurtley Beale, who is the incumbent 10,
will be the Test starting outhalf.
In the circumstances, the
Lions could not have achieved much more. Once again they showed a potent mix of
big, hard carriers, who burst through and carried on into tackles repeatedly,
but there was a fair amount of subtlety and skill too, albeit against a
patchwork mix of six internationals, some with limited Super Rugby experience
and a few rookies who, between them, missed 27 tackles.
After a second-quarter lull,
Gatland was pleased with his team’s ruthlessness after some strong talking at
half-time.
Generally there was good
shape to their attack, with the Lions again exploiting the blindside to then
truck it up before using the full width of the pitch to telling effect.
Accordingly, most of their
tries were scored wide out.
With Jonny Sexton pulling the
strings on the gainline, the Lions also read the Force defence pushing up hard
– they were frequently pinged for offside by the impressive Glen Jackson, an
English Premiership finalist only three years ago – to make hay with balls back
inside.
On the debit side, there
were a couple of defensive glitches, which both Gatland and Andy Farrell
conceded will prompt some work and, alas, the glitches in Rory Best’s line-out
throwing resurfaced, with a couple of overthrows at attacking line-outs. A
sluggish night for Alun-Wyn Jones ended with a 72nd minute yellow card.
The lack of a truly
competitive fixture aside, there were many more positive. Jamie Heaslip carried
with real ballast and footwork, while also leading the Lions’ tackle count with
12, but alongside him Seán O’Brien was hugely prominent.
Conor Murray was harried
illegally several times, but passed crisply enough, indeed gave a couple of
try-scoring passes, and kept the fringe defence occupied. Outside him, Sexton
oozed class, running in the first of the nine tries himself, attacking the gain
line and repeatedly putting those inside and out into space.
Disappointed
He was, revealed Gatland
afterwards, disappointed not to have the place-kicking duties, but couldn’t
have bettered Leigh Halfpenny’s perfect 11 out of 11 kicks at goal. Given the
majority of the conversions were from the touchline, that 28-point haul was
remarkable.
The Manu Tuilagi-Brian
O’Driscoll combination dovetailed nicely on its first outing, with the two
switching effectively between inside and outside centre, and even allowing for
his classy touches and clever brace of tries in the city where he made a
try-scoring debut a dozen years ago, O’Driscoll didn’t have exclusive rights on
all of the neat handling.
The neat midfield triangle worked
between Sexton and the two centres, the outhalf dummying to O’Driscoll before
Tuilagi crashed up the middle to free his hands and release his captain for a
run-in untouched underneath the posts for his second try was possibly the pick
of the nine scored.
As was the case last
Saturday in Hong Kong, two big, potent, ball-carrying wingers were often used
up the wing, with George North’s work in contact against bordering on freakish.