IRELAND-15 AUSTRALIA-32

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HAVING OUR NUMBER

Ireland may have lost to tries from the 11850 boys, but the way things went it should be 999 we’re dialling.

Analysing this match is no different to any other - it’s all about how you look at it.  If you insist on a narrow viewpoint and take the 80 minutes on their own, then it makes things very simple…neither side was at their best but Australia were a hell of a lot closer and comfortably took their chances when they came.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are those who clicked on this site to see me make excuses for the performance because it was by and large a Leinster-influenced selection.   Well, those people aren’t going to be completely disappointed, although I would dispute that interpretation of my motives.

But there is only one way to start looking back on the action and that is  by pointing out what went wrong for Ireland, and we saw glimpses of it all in the opening minute.

“No Plan B”  has been used so much by pundits you’d really think they’d have some sort of a back-up cliché to throw in there once in a while.  But when it’s so glaringly obvious that a coach has put mountains of time and effort into a given situation and then sees the opposition react accordingly, we have to go on saying it.

As Matt Toomua prepared to take the opening kickoff he saw Devin Toner lining up at one end of the pitch with a lifter near him, Rory Best at midfield in a similar situation for the short ball, and Paul O’Connell positioned between them (see screengrab 1).

Now of course this was an acceptable way for us to line up as the Wallaby forwards were over to that side, but when Toomua saw the set up he “called an audible” and chose instead to send the ball towards Fergus McFadden who was on his own and thus with an aggressive kick chase he was forced into a one-on-one tackle instead of the organised breakdown situation that probably would have resulted in better ball for Ireland.

Nothing actually came from that decision, but it was still an early example of just how match-ready the Aussies were despite the midweek booze-ups.

Then as Ireland got themselves back into position they won a penalty about 20m inside their own half, from which Heineken Cup hero and Lions starting 10 Jonathan Sexton planned to put the ball deep into Wallaby territory with the clock just barely ticking over the one minute mark.

The kick did not even find touch.

It is a recipe for disaster when you take a dash of an opponent who is quick to react to what you want to do and mix in a helping of your star players not doing the simple things; Ireland were fed large portions of the resulting dish all evening at the Aviva Stadium.

Of course we must address our defence, an area where Irish teams by rights should be excelling and one where we overcame these same Aussies in RWC2011. 

First and foremost I think that choosing Reddan over Murray was a mistake.  No, that does not mean our defensive lapses were entirely his fault, it’s just that with the eye-catching selection that left a Lion on the bench it showed Ewen McKenzie some of our offensive hand.

Australia knew we’d try to avoid a kicking game so they set themselves up with a high-line defence that was hell bent on disrupting our quick ball. That’s not to say that Ireland weren’t set up to do something similar but for me the difference was in the players’ attitudes.

In screengrab 2 you see the way the two defences were lining up as the opposing 10 was receiving the ball.  Both appear to be technically correct given the position on the field but if you look closely you can see that the Irish players seem more static waiting for the tacklers to come to them while the Wallaby defenders are on the front foot and much like the kickoff, are primed to respond to what we are about to do.

In between the two scenarios above, Australia got their first try, and not long afterwards they got their second, and what hurt most about them was how similar they were.

Normally I try to avoid getting too technical with these writeups but for this match in particular I reckon it is necessary.  There’s a decent article on Rugby Resources called “Heads Up Rugby” that does exactly what it says on the tin and the Wallabies played like it had been drummed into their consciousness, here’s a sample

Dog Leg in defence - One person lagging back from the rest can be attacked. The ball carrier can attack the dog leg and look to slip in behind one of the defenders on either side of the one creating the dog leg. If they see this coming, they will have to step out of their own alignment, thus creating a hole where they were for another attacking player.

Quick thinking & execution from Quade Cooper helped find the space for Stephen Moore to break through and off-load to Nick “Honey Badger" Cummins for the first try, but on the far side of the pitch Tommy Bowe was hanging back…Shane Horgan called it “corner-flagging” but what the Wallabies saw was a gap they knew how to exploit.

Sure, they needed pinpoint offloads and Eoin Reddan over-running on the cover didn’t exactly help us either, but the fact remains, we held the door open a crack and they knew how to prise it open the rest of the way.

Same goes for the second try, only this time it was both O’Mahony AND Bowe falling back from the defensive line allowing the visitors more space to run at us with precision (SG3) and in Ken Bohane’s lead photo you can see man-of-the-match Mike Hooper taking full advantage.

Now here’s the thing…when Quade Cooper missed the conversion we were 3-15 down, yet by the time the halftime whistle blew, we had clawed our way back to 12-15 and the Aussies had Hooper in the bin.  What’s more, we deserved to be back in the contest.

Jonathan Sexton realised what the Aussies were doing early on.  He tried to dink the ball over into the space behind them more than once, and more than once it came off.  During that second quarter, we were actually doing a very good job of clawing our way back into the match.

The restart after we got to within three points came with the clock at 39:43, and it fell to Eoin Reddan.  Should he have simply booted the ball into touch?  I know it’s easy to say now, but I was screaming at him to do it at the time.  That doesn’t make it completely his fault that Sexton popped his hamstring moments later but the way the first half had gone I doubt anyone would have blamed him for ending the period.

I have to be careful with this next bit, because I’m questioning the ref.  No, he didn’t cost us the match by a long stretch, we took care of that ourselves. 

BUT…having shown yellow to Hooper for a deliberate foul slowing down our offence on 32m, why didn’t Chris Pollock do the same for Scott Fardy on 37, Will Genia on 52 and Stephen Moore on 60, all for pretty much the same thing?  That’s my one query on the officiating and it could have made a difference. 

Of course they got the Kurindrani sending off bang-on, what a stupid thing to do at that stage of the game.  Side note…though he was entitled to be pissed off, if Peter O’Mahony wants to be Ireland skipper one day he’ll need to cool his jets.  Not that the Aussies were angels on the day, as shown by Cooper on Rob Kearney.

Still, there’s no point harping on that when we continued to fail with the simple things, and fair play to young Luke Marshall for putting his hand up for mixing up the coverage that allowed Quade Cooper to go over practically unchallenged for the killer third try early in the second half.

In his (pardon the pun) defence, it was not just the Ulster centre with the errors on the day - as I have already mentioned there were plenty to go around, with even such legends as Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell playing their part when it came to our offensive efforts falling flat.

But even with all of that doom and gloom, in the 61st minute, and us “just” ten points down, we had an attacking lineout in the Wallabies 22 and if we could have gotten our lineout/maul going as we had against Samoa the week previously, there was every possibility that a result was in our reach.

Cue Scott Fardy.  His leap to legally disrupt the ball from O’Connell’s grasp was so perfectly timed you’d swear he’d had our lineout playbook for lunch.  Game over. 

And of course when faced with their own lineout/maul down the other end a few minutes later, we got done to us almost exactly what we did to Samoa as Hooper applied the cherry to the icing on the cake.

Was it all negative for Ireland?  Probably, but if I had to single out players who shouldn’t bear too much of the stink from this performance it would be Fergus McFadden and Ian Madigan.  I don’t really care if you think that’s my blue goggles talking…I genuinely think they played the game in a spirit similar to that which our visitors showed to a man.

Does this spell disaster for Ireland’s future?  Absolutely not.  Joe Schmidt and his team made some wrong calls, and like I said the players are accepting their (rather large) portion of the blame as well.  So it will be a week of pouring over the various systems for them, with of course much deeper technical analysis than I have shown here, and they even have an extra day before The New Invincibles come to town.

Given how our last meeting with the World Champions went, to say we’re on a “hiding to nothing” is an unfortunate turn of phrase, but it’s an accurate one. 

I certainly did not enjoy re-watching this match.  And what’s more I am certainly not relishing the prospect of watching us next week once, let alone twice.

But I do know enough about rugby that we do have to afford this new regime some time to settle.  It’s not like we’re talking about a squad which has been together since the beginning of August the way the Aussies were.  As I said before the series began, I’m reserving my judgement for the time being.

We just need to find a way to mix things up when a team has our number.  And if anyone knows how to claw a squad back from poor early season results, it’s the man at the helm right now.  JLP

PS - if you’re of a superstitious nature it may interest you to know that this is writeup number 666 in HarpinOnRugby history.

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Also this weekend

Uruguay 16 - 15 Spain

France 38 - 18 Tonga

Romania 21 - 20 Canada

Wales 40 - 6 Argentina

England 22 - 30 New Zealand

Italy 37 - 31 Fiji

Georgia 23 - 25 United States of America

AUSTRALIA-16 LIONS-15

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LIONS MUST TRY AGAIN

If rugby union was a simple game we could blame Leigh Halfpenny for this result and prepare for the decider in Sydney next Saturday.

But however awesome his boot has been on this tour, his kick at the death which, though straight, still fell short is not the reason the Lions lost this contest.

And if you delved a little deeper into the way the match transpired, you’d probably then point to the way the Wallabies scored the only 5-pointer of the match and say that is how the result came about.

It was a try that was finished by a good line by Adam Ashley-Cooper, who seems to have a knack for scoring at the Etihad Stadium, but a Lions’ share of the blame would have to go to the two starting centres for the tourists.

The Wallabies were applying such pressure on the stubborn opposition defence at that late stage because not for the first time we handed possession back to them.  On this occasion we had Jonathan Davies fumbling the ball at midfield, to be briefly rescued by O’Driscoll who had the right idea in punting it long but given he was heading towards his own 22, even he couldn’t force a good result from his kick and it gave the home side the very open field broken play opportunity the craved all day.

Eventually, after several attempts, their phase play created the millimetre of space they needed in the back line and after almost 160 minutes of a pretty watertight channel the O’Driscoll/Davies axis cracked to allow AAC through.

But however much I can point my finger at the seldom used centre pairing for that try, I STILL don’t feel that is the reason the Lions lost this second test.

For me, restricting a SANZAR nation to just 16 points on their home patch is a pretty decent achievement for any test side, and when your defence does that, it’s up to you to put enough points on the board to make it count.

Sure, there were a couple of occasions when the Wallabies’ own defence did well…O’Connor kicked a monster of a clearance from behind his own tryline at one point and at another, skipper James Horwill (who possibly shouldn’t have been playing in the first place according to the IRB) did some excellent work to force a turnover after a Lions lineout/maul.

But more often than not, Warren Gatland’s charges were masters of their own failures when it came to racking up points, and there was plenty of blame to go around the side.

Johnny Sexton had a poor first quarter by his standards.  He was able to dig deep and recover later, unleashing a stunning series of bombs in open play which landed on a sixpence outside the Aussie 22 each time, but for me it was absolutely vital for these Lions to establish a lead early, and with first a rushed kick into touch on the full and then missing touch altogether with a routine penalty, he certainly played a part in our wrong-doing.

Of course it wasn’t just him by a long stretch; throughout the match we had the rest of the starting XV taking their turns to foil momentum…much was made of Vunipola’s problems at scrum time but there were also some issues with lineouts from Tom Youngs, basic handling & grubber errors from Davies and poor timing by Lydiate getting himself caught offside, that gave the Australians either relief or scoring opportunities.

But it wasn’t even the individual errors that were doing for us overall – a lot of it came down to risky decisions that were made that just simply didn’t pay off.

I for one certainly can’t fault a coach who sticks to his guns, and Warren Gatland has done that on this tour in many areas, not least of which was a persistence with Sam Warburton.  And for the most part, in this decision his faith was rewarded as I reckon the Cardiff Blue put himself about the pitch extremely well.

But elsewhere the decisions weren’t doing so well…like Vunipola in the scrum.  When the margins are so tight, just how many times does a prop have to be pinged before he gets the hook?  We might as well ignore the rights and wrongs of the individual calls…the whistle was in the hands of Craig Joubert and whether it was genuine or thanks to pressure from the Aussie media, he had Mako’s number and there was a strong case for Ryan Grant to be sent on to at least try and fix the set-piece.

Still, for me, the biggest decision we got wrong came around the 7th minute.  We had already won a kickable penalty yet chose to go for the lineout/maul.  The sight of Brian O’Driscoll in the line let us know a famous Warren 15-man-job was on the cards.  It didn’t quite pay off, though we not only won another pen but Horwill was warned for successive maul-collapses and a yellow card wasn’t far away.

In the wild, should a lion ever have a wallaby wounded for real, it would most certainly go straight for the kill.  I couldn’t for the life of me work out why, having already shown an attacking intent, we then chose to play it safe.  The placekick may have been successful and gotten the scoreboard moving, but it also gave Horwill the chance to re-gather his troops and just 10 minutes later they had worked their way into a lead.

People have criticised the coach’s tactics on this tour but if I were him I wouldn’t change them overall…they were what won him the job and for such a honoured one-off position why should he stray too far from his comfort zone? 

But if “Gatland-ball” is to work, not only does the scoring have to come early & often, but also the right amount of beef is required to make the necessary gainline breaks.  As well as replacing his injured skipper, Warren will have to make some changes to his lineup for Sydney.

Some may say replacing Warburton will be his most interesting choice, but I reckon he’s got himself a dilemma at scrum-half.  His instincts will have him going back to Mike Phillips.  Ben Youngs earned his starting place but is more suited to a bench role for this particular series.  And Conor Murray’s cameo made a more than decent case for starting all three tests with different 9s.  Personally though, I think he should go with the one he knows and show Phillips some faith similar to that he did in his tour captain.

As for the back row, Lydiate may have tackled his heart out but this would be more useful in the final quarter.  My ideal trio for Sydney would be O’Brien, Tipuric & Heaslip with Farmer Dan & Tom Croft on the bench.  The Wallabies can only get better at the breakdown after Melbourne and this blend should at least match them as well as bringing the bash.

In the centre, since it seems O’Driscoll is going to be captain the question is…do we go with Davies again if Roberts doesn’t make it?  I reckon Sexton needs stronger lines coming down that channel.  Sadly, in this squad, outside of Roberts he’s actually a decent candidate for the 12 jumper himself but that would be too unorthodox for such a vital game. 

Manu?  Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?  I dunno.  One minute I say “hell, yeah” the next I say “meh…”  Anyway, hopefully Dr JR will make it.

My apologies for sailing into next week’s waters when I’m still writing up Saturday’s match but I can’t look at the second test without asking myself how we can win the third.

Among the other starters to impress, Tommy Bowe justified his fast-tracking into the side, while although Paul O’Connell was conspicuous by his absence as expected, Parling came very close to pinching a few lineouts and more often than not the Aussies were taking big risks throwing the ball to his part of the lineout.

Returning to Halfpenny’s kicking for a moment, I reckon that last-gasp effort was just on the limits of his range and to be honest I never thought he’d make it.  His success has been based on a strict regime but I feel the closed roof played its part…his last kick wasn’t a million miles away from where he took his first which just hit the wrong side of the crossbar and there was no gust of wind to give it a hand either way.

Still…could an argument be made that a tap and go option would have been better for that penalty situation? Could we have trusted ourselves to avail of the extra ten metres and more to work our way into drop goal territory?  I think so, but it would most definitely have been a brave call.  And while we’re on the subject of placekicks, it has to be said that Christian Leali’ifano was superb from the tee on what was virtually his test debut , particularly with what turned out to be the winning conversion.

One other incident I can’t ignore was the George North “He Ain’t Heavy” moment when he charged through Israel Folau’s attempted tackle.  The YouTube clip went viral so there’s not much more I can add about that BUT I will say that had it not happened, RugbyDump could well be featuring that bit of the match anyway because I can’t believe nobody is talking about BOD’s pass through his own legs that got the ball to North in the first place!

So for the second week in a row we had one team losing a match as opposed to the other winning it.  Sure, the Aussies did some good things, but when you’re outplayed at such key positions as 6,7,8 and 10 you shouldn’t win too often at test level.

For me, this series is a classic even without all the trips down memory lane provided by the folks at Sky.  It’s the perfect matchup of contrasting styles…for the tourists you have the well-drilled organisation while for the home side, even though Robbie Deans went to such trouble keeping Quade Cooper out of the equation, his charges are still forced to instinctively making the most out of what chinks in the armour they can find, which more often than not is leading to their own mistakes.

Absolutely every millisecond will count in Sydney.  Assuming the Lions defence can stay resolute for the 80 minutes, I reckon we need to be aiming for around the 24-point mark to put an historic series win within reach, so since I can’t see us getting 8 kicking opportunities, we MUST breach the Wallaby line.

But I reckon we can do it.  And all with BOD as skipper no less.  It seems to be writing itself doesn’t it.  I’d better stop now before I jinx things. JLP

My ideal Gatlandball lineup for Sydney, with injury cover in brackets…

Halfpenny, Bowe, O’Driscoll, Roberts (Manu), North, Sexton, Phillips.  Corbisero (Grant), T Youngs, Adam Jones, Alun-Wyn Jones, Parling, O’Brien, Tipuric, Heaslip.  BENCH – Hibbard, Vunipola, Cole, Croft, Lydiate, B Youngs, Farrell, Cuthbert.

PS – Major kudos to the Irish Womens 7s team for their top 8 finish at the World Cup in Moscow, which not only earns them a place in the World Series, but also is a big step for Olympic qualification.

AUSTRALIA-21 LIONS-23

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GENIA & THE BOTTLE

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