By the time the Lions return to Eden Park for the first Test against New Zealand on 24 June they will either be roaring or whimpering. The next five games – all inside 14 days – really will be a test of manhood and there is not a single local who anticipates the touring team returning unbeaten from their bruising provincial mini-tour.
If a talented, but occasionally flaky Blues side are not defeated in the opening midweek fixture on Wednesday, things will only get tougher. The Crusaders are currently heading the Super Rugby standings, the Highlanders are tucked in behind, a pumped-up Maori XV can make the All Blacks appear demure and the Chiefs play the most eye-catching rugby on Earth. Pick the easy option out of that lot.
The Lions are also battling on two wearily familiar fronts: gelling unfamiliar players and combinations over an impossibly short period in front of rugby’s least-forgiving audience. Most New Zealanders are charming to visitors but this is not immediately obvious in the rugby sections of the newspapers. As Warren Gatland is already being reminded, beating the world champions in their backyard requires rare resilience on and off the field.
Even with the tour still in its infancy, the news wires are awash with barbs. Gatland has been derided as the wrong man for the Lions job, with his team dismissed as less enthusiastic than a chicken heading towards KFC and incapable of finding their own hotel, let alone the formula for a victorious series. Knockabout insults, maybe, but an instinctive lack of respect for northern hemisphere rugby oozes from many media orifices.
The only way to chip away at such ingrained perceptions is on the pitch. And even if the Lions do somehow win all their next five games, howls of criticism of their style, the refereeing or some other perceived slight will inevitably follow. If a highly rated New Zealand team lose, particularly at home, the notion of the other side having outplayed them comes well down the post-match list.
This may well have underpinned Gatland’s irritation this week when the unflattering phrase “Warrenball” was predictably wheeled out in a press conference, albeit by a British reporter. This is a man who has coached winning teams all over the world – with Wasps, Waikato and Wales, among others – yet is still widely portrayed as a coach who merely picks a crash-ball centre and invites 14 other blokes to pile in behind him. “I don’t know what Warrenball means,” protested his assistant, Rob Howley, who has coached alongside Gatland for much of the past decade. “Have we played that over the last few years? I’m not too sure.”
Rugby’s eternal truth is that every professional coach adopts the approach he believes will win him the most games with the players available to him at the time. Which is why the Lions management are now talking repeatedly of the need to stretch opposition defences, as opposed to simply seeking contact or relying on forward power. Attacking scrums and lineouts largely depend on the opposition dropping the ball or kicking it out of play. If nimble, quick-thinking Kiwi sides do neither, where does that leave the Lions’ hopes of set-piece dominance? “Teams are smart, they know how to counteract physicality alone,” confirmed the ever-thoughtful Leicester prop Dan Cole. “You can’t just have one way of playing against those guys.”
Hence Howley’s recurring use of the phrase “rugby chaos” to describe the high-intensity training sessions the squad are taking to sharpen their reaction skills for what lies ahead. “That’s rugby in the southern hemisphere,” stressed Howley. “The majority of the game now is from kick returns and turnovers and it’s the ability to react in those situations, not get left behind and be ahead of the game. The challenge for us is for players to play the game they see. That’s the message we keep giving them. You have to get numbers around the ball sometimes but, ultimately, it’s about playing with some talent and playing some intelligent rugby.”
Yet in almost the same breath Howley was conceding it would be unwise of the Lions to reveal their full hand until the Test series starts: “We need to hold back on certain elements and make sure we put our players under the same fatigue and chaos in training that the All Blacks will do.”
The odd provincial defeat would not, he suggested, be the end of the world: “If we lose one or two games but get a good picture of how the All Blacks will play, we’ll be a better side for those experiences.”
Perhaps, even more importantly, the Lions need to display a greater lust for life than in their opening game in Whangarei. Training has certainly been getting feisty – according to Howley it has become “pretty heated” this week – and even an experienced Test Lion such as Johnny Sexton will need to shape up to feature against the All Blacks. “I suppose the word is inconsistent,” said Howley. “I spoke to Johnny and he admitted it.
“It was tough for him but he’s a world-class 10 and he’ll bounce back. He’s a very intelligent rugby player.”
Blues: M Collins; M Duffie, G Moala, SB Williams, R Ioane; S Perofeta, A Pulu; O Tu’ungafasi, J Parsons (capt), C Faumuina, G Cowley-Tuioti, Scrafton, A Ioane, B Gibson, S Luatua.
Replacements: H Faiva, H Hodgman, S Mafileo, P Tuipulotu, K Pryor, S Nock, I West, TJ Faiane.
British & Irish Lions: L Halfpenny; J Nowell, J Payne, R Henshaw, E Daly; D Biggar, R Webb; J McGrath, K Owens (capt), D Cole, C Lawes, M Itoje, J Haskell, J Tipuric, CJ Stander.
Replacements: R Best, J Marler, K Sinckler, Henderson, O’Mahony, Laidlaw, J Sexton, L Williams.
Referee: P Gaüzère (France).
