When it comes to the All Blacks, what you see is not always what you get. The Lions had used their pressing game to telling effect against the Crusaders and the Maori, forcing them to play behind the gainline and making offloads hazardous, but by narrowing the point of attack and playing through their scrum-half rather than their outside-half New Zealand were able to recycle ball quickly and dictate the pace of the game.
Analysts play a major role in the preparation of teams, but trying to figure out New Zealand involves journeys up dead ends. The All Blacks are like a batsman in commanding form: move a fielder and the ball will invariably be dispatched into the space vacated. While their overall policy remains the same, manoeuvering the ball into space and giving the ball-carrier options, they are far from one-dimensional and have a mastery of the basics.
They scored 78 points against Samoa eight days before the first Test despite having only 45 per cent of the possession. They were at their most dangerous when not in possession, but against the Lions, opponents who believed they could secure a decisive advantage up front, the percentage rose to 61. The tourists were unable to establish a territorial toehold and most of their chances came from counterattacks.
The All Blacks defused the Lions’ scrum by staying square and upright and they defended the driving maul by quickly going low on the lineout receiver and preventing it getting into gear. The buildup had been dominated by talk of how the Lions would deal with the threats of the outside-half Beauden Barrett, who played most of the match at full-back because of another head injury suffered by Ben Smith, and the offloading of Sonny Bill Williams, but the scrum-half Aaron Smith was their attacking fulcrum.
He brought his forwards into play, Brodie Retallick and Kieran Read driving hard into defenders around the fringes as the All Blacks looked to exploit space and the Lions fanned out into midfield. New Zealand’s three tries all came from movements of one phase: a quickly taken penalty, a scrum and a kick that was misfielded. When they did offload, the pass tended to be low which gave the Lions less chance of picking it off.
New Zealand have shattered images throughout their history, playing in big matches in a way they were not expected to as they take on a team at its strongest point and the first Test was almost a role reversal. It was New Zealand who won the physical battle, controlling the breakdown and the scrum, and playing the game in their opponents’ half while the Lions were at their most dangerous on the counterattack, as they showed with their opening try which evoked memories of the Gareth Edwards score for the Barbarians against New Zealand in 1973.
Warren Gatland had said during the week he was going to tell the match referee, Jaco Peyper, to watch out for New Zealand players blocking to allow a runner to exploit a gap, but the block of the match was that of Ben Te’o on Sonny Bill Williams when Liam Williams ran out of his own 22 to set up the try of the match. It was coolly and cleverly executed by Te’o, who shackled Williams during his 56 minutes on the field, intent masquerading as inadvertence and it hardly merited a penalty. Had one been awarded, though, the Lions would have had themselves to blame and should talk to the referee for the second Test, Jérôme Garcès, directly this week rather than through the media.
It is a match the Lions have to win to keep the series alive. They did so in Wellington in 1993 but New Zealand are even stronger now than they were then and will be better for their first meaningful run-out in seven months. It was their captain Read’s fifth match of the year but the way he imposed himself on the game from the start, carrying and tackling – one hit on Owen Farrell reverberated around the ground – was class overcoming a lack of match fitness, a reason why the All Blacks are able to seamlessly replace players such as Richie McCaw and Dan Carter.
There will be a response from the Lions but New Zealand will again move the point of their attack. They will have to reshuffle their back division, with Ben Smith and Ryan Crotty first-half casualties, but they will not be weakened. Steve Hansen’s decision to play Rieko Ioane on the left wing ahead of Julian Savea was rewarded with two tries. The second came after the 20-year-old’s turbo kicked in despite a low rev count, his remarkable acceleration flat-footing one of the quickest players on the field, Elliot Daly.
If Israel Dagg is moved to full-back to replace Smith, Savea may return, although Hansen has several other options, including Waisake Naholo and Nehe Milner-Skudder. In one sense, it matters little who is playing because players are so comfortable in a system which allows freedom of expression and places emphasis on skill. When it comes down to the reading of a game and reacting to the unexpected, no one does it better than the All Blacks.
There are parts of their game they will be working on, not least receiving kicks, attacking lineouts and tactical kicking, but the Lions will have a chance of winning only if they take the initiative and sustain it. They overturned a similar scoreline in the first Test in Australia in 1989 (30-12) to win the series but this is different, men against a self-programming machine.
