Win a private movie screening for you and up to 30 of your friends courtesy of Denzille Private Cinema in the latest HoR “unriggable raffle”, click here for details.
The Wallaby game plan was so shrouded in secrecy before this opening battle that even the Aussie TV commentators didn’t know who was nominated to take their placekicks until James O’Connor was handed the tee in the 3rd minute.
Even before we made that discovery, however, a sizeable chunk of that plan had to be torn up as Test debutante Christian Leali’ifano was stretchered off after a cruelly unlucky collision with Jonathan Davies in his opening challenge and he was replaced by the more defensive-minded Pat McCabe.
What we proceeded to see from the Wallabies was an even mix of the Good the Bad and the Ugly which wasn’t enough. But only just.
The leadup to the game’s opening try reminded me of a scene from a different flick…namely Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy shoots the guy who is expertly brandishing a sword before him.
The Lions had just gotten their first series of front-foot ball in the Wallaby 22, and Johnny Sexton set about manoeuvring his offence towards their try line as no doubt they had been painstakingly preparing all throughout the tour. Thing was though, the hosts would have been preparing for it too and for the most part held them out, though referee Chris Pollock’s determination to favour the attacking team did win the Lions a penalty which they chose to ignore.
I will deal with the rights and wrongs of the referee’s interpretations of the breakdown laws later…in this case he chose to ping Brian O’Driscoll for the third time in the opening thirteen minutes just moments after deeming the Lions’ advantage to be over. So after a series of phases forged on the training ground designed to slice through the opposition had failed, the home side proceeded to take a much more direct route courtesy of a quick tap & go by their inspirational skipper Will Genia.
His run which took him from just inside his own 22 to just outside the Lions’ was literally mesmerizing, for his opposite number Mike Phillips first, and then for left winger George North who did his best to cover his man but eventually got drawn in to a challenge leaving union rookie Israel Folau free to receive a clever little grubber from his captain and stroll over for the opening score of the series.
Despite all the smoke and mirrors surrounding Deans’ strategy, that superbly taken 5-pointer had pretty much all the hallmarks we were expecting, and it was game on.
Not that this was going to rattle an offence led by Jonathan Sexton, however. One of the trademarks of his success with Leinster has been his ability to respond quickly to opposition scores and he and George North combined for an absolutely crucial choke tackle thwarting a Wallaby attack shortly after that opening score and off the resulting scrum they marched down the field before Leigh Halfpenny got his first crack at the posts.
Once the Lions’ side of the scoreboard got moving it was their turn to take full advantage of a mistake from the opposition. To be fair, it was only the high standards of such an epic contest as this that made Berrick Barnes’ slightly over-cooked garryowen a “mistake”.
With all the success the Wallabies have enjoyed over the Welsh in recent years, I’m not so sure their fans would have been too worried to see George North receive the ball in open play as he did when he received the kick. A few moments later as he (needlessly I thought) gestured to Genia while crossing the try line, they all knew just how worried they need to be.
It was a finish of the highest order, beating four despairing tackles along the way (an “old fashioned” winger would have probably fallen to O’Connor’s ankle tap but not this giant of a number 11) and as it turned out, put the tourists in the lead for good – the home side were in front for just 13 minutes and to say it was a sign of bad luck for them was a major understatement.
Next it was the Lions’ turn to attack the opposition 22 shortly after a try, and this time North was denied another by a millisecond as his elbow grazed the touchline just before he got the ball down. Credit must go to Genia for catching him this time, just. Luckily there was still an advantage for his side and Halfpenny stretched the lead to six.
Then it was time for more magic from Folau. Ironically I had just sent a text to a mate saying : “Sexton having a blinder you wouldn’t know it by Sky tho” when he found himself facing the winger on the edge of his 22. For a split second, there seemed to be no danger. But again, the standards here were so high that even the brief amount of time it took the Lion outhalf to consider his covering options was too much and with a quick plant of the right foot, Folau was by him.
That brought the Wallabies to within a point, and by rights they should have gone ahead but O’Connor missed his third placekick of the first half. How he can go from someone with the bottle to beat the All Blacks to someone who couldn’t kick snow off a rope only he could know…maybe it was the weight of the pressure heaped on him by his coach when he chose to reject Quade Cooper as 10? The youngster is a quality footballer who was practically silent in this contest and perhaps would have been better suited in the back three.
Still, as it turned out, he wasn’t the only Aussie kicker to bottle it, but for all that has been written & joked about regarding that last second slip, there was still a lot left to happen in this match that influenced the result every bit as much.
The Lions may have been dropping like flies on this tour but after the way this first test went I doubt they will get much sympathy from their hosts. Having already lost probable starters in their backrow long before the visitors’ plane touched down, to lose both of your starting centres AND the replacement as well as your full back over the 80 minutes is just downright rotten luck.
And you can’t say the Lions saw no benefit on the scoreboard either. In my preview I said watch out for Alex Cuthbert if a Wallaby was to find the sin bin. Though Pollock didn’t appear to have his cards with him, when substitute Pat McCabe went off meaning openside flanker Hooper had to cover the centre position, in many ways it was as good as having an extra man, and the visitors took full advantage on the first set play.
Did O’Driscoll throw an illegal block on O’Connor to help provide the space? Perhaps, but if so it was borderline and since the officials were apparently favouring the attacking team on such calls, it was only right that the TMO allowed Cuthbert the try.
This put the Lions 20-12 in front but there were only 49 minutes on the clock so even though the home side needed two scores there was plenty of time to get them. And now is a good time to talk about Mr Pollock and his interpretation of the breakdown.
It is ironic that it took a rugby league convert to provide the tries for the Wallabies because when you go to great lengths to discourage the defending team from competing for the ball, you are bringing the 15-man code very close to its 13-man rival.
Chris Pollock hails from New Zealand and thus will never have officiated Richie McCaw at test level. Any non-All Black rugby fan will tell you that the great number 7 was given the benefit of the doubt countless times simply because of who he is. Maybe, just maybe, Brian O’Driscoll’s achievements in the game deserved similar treatment in the opening minutes?
If you strictly apply the laws then sure, it’s extremely difficult even for the great BOD to 100% support his own body weight over a tackled player. But to ping it so freely is to suggest that all this time O’Driscoll has been cheating. And if he has, then McCaw has. That’s all I’m saying.
So you could say Pollock favoured the home side in that they knew from the get go how to handle the breakdown area, but did he form this view the night before the test? I think not. The refs were announced well in advance so maybe, just maybe, Gatland’s men could have been better prepared. And when it came to favouring the attacking side, the officials seemed pretty consistent throughout the match.
And as it turned out, it took a clever use of Pollock’s interpretation by another legendary Irish ex-Lions captain that played a huge part in preventing the Wallabies from getting what could have been a decisive third try.
A scintillating open field break from Kurtley Beale brought his side to within inches of our line. Meanwhile, in Brady’s in Terenure, I was shouting “somebody foul! somebody foul!” – the only thing that was going to protect our try line was a deliberate pen, and given the Aussies did just that right before half time with no card as a result, it was only right that we should as well, and thankfully Paul O’Connell was bang wide to it. You would have feared for the furniture in Brady’s had Paulie seen yellow for that.
But he didn’t and the home side had to be content with a two point deficit. They had two more chances to put their noses in front, but as we all know Beale wasn’t up to the task. I have to admit that looking over the match a second time I did feel sorry for him after the slip…though there was a certain amount of irony that it was on a patch of turf very close to that which forced the pen in the first place.
So it was victory for the Lions, but it didn’t come without its worries. And I don’t just mean the loss of O’Connell to injury either, though that truly is a cruel blow.
What concerns me most is that Gatland’s side did a pretty good job of executing their gameplan throughout this match. With the exception of a couple of scrums towards the end (both of which I am tempted to pin on Hibbard) the set pieces were fine. For the most part the offence seemed to achieve what it set out though it was faced by a stubborn “D” more often than not. Also, we proved ourselves able to create broken play opportunities much like our hosts.
Most disappointing performance from a red jersey was definitely Mike Phillips. Had one break but didn’t bring anywhere near the overall game we expected. I have a feeling Gatland will stick with him though.
Yet despite all that gameplan success, we won by just the two points thanks to a last second slip. Will we be that lucky over the next two weeks? I’m not so sure.
This writeup has gone wayyyy longer than I intended, but I have covered the good from Genia & Folau and the bad from Beale & O’Connor…what about the ugly, or should I say the hideous, from Horwill?
After this test match was over I went to see Man of Steel. I reckoned it was good, but nowhere near the same league as Christopher Nolan’s Batman series.
That’s kind of the way I felt about this stamp from the Wallaby skipper when I compared it to the incidents involving Tana Umaga and Schalk Burger from tours gone by. Sure, there are elements of this that you can use to make comparisons, but there are also several where you most certainly cannot.
I have already made a case in this article that senior players should be afforded the benefit of the doubt when it comes to cheating. For the good of the game of rugby, we have to believe that Horwill’s first reaction when he saw Alun-Wyn Jones’ head at the base of that ruck (assuming he saw him at all) was NOT to drive his studs into the Welsh lock’s face. Otherwise he should be banned for life. So my call – not guilty. My apologies to Brian Moore who saw it a tad differently.
On to Melbourne, where Gatland has to change things or this series could turn on its head quickly. If tests 2 & 3 serve up half the tension and entertainment that we saw in Brisbane, whether your hats are made of yellow plastic or fake lion fur, hold on to them. JLP
