It was not supposed to end like this. As recently as a few weeks ago the final Test of this British & Irish Lions series was still slated to take place up at altitude in the 90,000-capacity FNB Stadium in Soweto. Before that the possibility of a transplanted grand finale in Dublin, Cardiff or Twickenham was mooted to no avail. A big game still awaits but spiritually there is definitely something missing.
In many ways it is remarkable that any sort of completed series has come to pass at all. The odds on reaching this final weekend without Covid being crowned the unanimous winner appeared more than a touch remote early last month. The host union, which had hoped to generate almost £25m from this tour, has yet to do all its sums but will now have to settle for barely half a million pounds instead.
Given the horrendously difficult backdrop – with political turmoil, rioting and looting thrown in – SA Rugby deserves credit for turning what could easily have been a total non-event into something vaguely marketable. And yet. When the broader story of this 2021 expedition to South Africa is written it will read, barring an absolutely sensational late twist, as a cautionary tale of how not to treat a great sporting institution.
Even if the rugby so far had been slightly more scintillating, the collateral damage would still have been significant. No sea of red, no socialising, no township coaching visits, no decent provincial opposition, no real festival vibe. Hands up if you have been watching the Olympics or the Euros or Wimbledon or the cricket instead? Or if you cannot quite understand why the Lions are still bashing away with the Premier League football season due to start next week? Let’s just say you are not alone.
Wrong time, wrong place in the calendar. And the knock-on effects should not be minimised. There is a strong argument that much of the social media rancour and animosity that has attached itself to this series would not have occurred had there been 30,000 red-shirted travelling fans around to raise everyone’s morale. Would even Rassie Erasmus have ended up making provocative mid-series videos had he been able to rub shoulders with the media, among others, and chat face to face?
We shall never know for sure, just as we shall forever have to wonder what might have happened had Cheslin Kolbe seen a red rather than a yellow card last week or more than a nanosecond of Faf de Klerk’s head-high challenge on Conor Murray been replayed on the big screen. The conspiracy theorists who insist that South Africa – the respected current world champions who have conceded only 12 tries in their last 15 Tests – remain the victims of some kind of dastardly World Rugby officiating plot are seeing only the crescent, not the whole of the moon.
All of which at least adds some genuine spice to the last 80 minutes of this simmering series. The bulk of this Lions party set off for their initial training camp in Jersey almost eight weeks ago and have sacrificed enough not to fancy returning home empty-handed now. This is also set to be the last Lions roar for both Warren Gatland and Alun Wyn Jones, neither of whom is hardwired to bow out with a whimper.
As with the surfers riding big waves almost in the shadows of the concrete retaining wall at Mouille Point around the corner from Cape Town Stadium, there will be hardly any margin for error. In the green corner is a side who finished the second Test well on top and are in no mood to be merciful. A happy-clappy shared group photo in the event of the series being drawn, as happened in New Zealand in 2017, would not particularly chime with the tenor of the series as a whole.
It does feel slightly odd that the tour conditions have not been tweaked to allow for the possibility of extra time, although just imagine Erasmus’s reaction had a debatable ruck interpretation in the 119th minute gone the Lions’ way. Like Ben O’Keeffe last week, France’s Mathieu Raynal will be under pressure from first whistle to last, not least from a Lions side who desperately want the game to be played at a higher tempo than last Saturday’s dirge of a second Test.
The Lions attack coach, Gregor Townsend, is keenly aware his side will need to grasp their own destiny: “We’ve got to create more, that’s for sure” – and hope the match officials will do their bit to keep the contest moving along. “We have made the point that we don’t want unnecessary stoppages,” said Townsend. “When the game stops for a scrum or a lineout you want the game restarted as quickly as possible. Everybody watching at home does, too. We know we have to control the game more by moving South Africa around and draining them of energy whenever we can.”
If Erasmus succeeded in altering the refereeing landscape last weekend, he and Jacques Nienaber may thus have prepared their squad for something slightly different. With the injured De Klerk and Pieter-Steph du Toit absent, both teams will also be acutely conscious of maintaining their discipline. Lurking on the bench is none other than Morné Steyn whose long-range howitzer of a boot ultimately decided the last Lions series in South Africa 12 years ago. He could not do it again, could he?
The Lions can only pray that, in Sam Simmonds and Finn Russell, they have their own potential match-winners if it does boil down to a last-quarter flash of brilliance. In the second half of the first Test and the first half of the second the side have looked more than capable of winning this series, without quite hammering in all the nails. Nine Lions have started all three Tests and all of them know that a definitive team performance still awaits.
In that event it would be some send-off for Gatland and Jones, who were also head coach and captain when the Lions last clinched a series, in Sydney in 2013. Then, as now, they were required to bounce back from a second Test defeat, against opponents who struggled to regain the same emotional intensity they had shown the previous week. Nothing about this tour has been easy, from start to finish, but the Lions are still in the fight. Hang tough for another 80 minutes and lasting global respect can still be theirs.
