When they reflect on their night’s work in Canberra, the British & Irish Lions will again have mixed emotions. At their best the touring team look sharp and dangerous but, with the Test series fast approaching, they are not firing on all cylinders in some key areas. A first-half injury to the full‑back Blair Kinghorn has also come at a delicate moment, before the first Test in Brisbane on Saturday week.
Fielding close to their best starting XV, the Lions scored five tries with Ollie Chessum, James Lowe and Marcus Smith crossing in the first half and Garry Ringrose and Josh van der Flier following suit in the second. The in-form Finn Russell contributed 11 points with the boot to cap another assured performance.
Up in the stand, even so, the watching Wallaby head coach, Joe Schmidt, will not have been totally disheartened. He will have been suitably impressed by Russell’s composure and all-round accuracy and Maro Itoje’s authority but, equally, the Brumbies scored four tries and at no stage did the Lions run riot. Schmidt will feel privately that the touring team are not unbeatable.
For everyone else the overriding memory of this game will be the Lions’ inability to kill off the contest earlier. They should have scored at least three more tries and, when the Test series comes around, will need to be more clinical and more dominant physically.
It is probably just as well that they are not about to play either the All Blacks or the Springboks.
Despite positive efforts from Chessum, Ringrose and the official man of the match, Jamison Gibson‑Park, the Lions are still not starting games with thunderous intent. Instead it was the Brumbies who burst out of the blocks, a prolonged series of low-slung charges ending with Tuaina Taii Tualima taking the aerial route to the line inside four minutes. With Kinghorn limping off inside the first 25 minutes and Bundee Aki throwing an attempted pass straight into touch, things were not going entirely to plan.
How many Australian households were tuning in to assess the touring team was another matter. The fixture clashed with rugby league’s State of Origin series decider in Sydney and the Brumbies were never going to win that one. Australia’s sporting market is crowded and the Wallabies’ lack of recent success has not helped union.
Russell, though, is very definitely box office, and a lovely little gliding run and deft pass set up Chessum for an equalising try. The Lions are still building a few combinations but there is nothing wrong with their quick-witted half-back pairing. There was another good example at the start of the second quarter when Russell carved out some space on the left and Kinghorn’s pass to Lowe looked certain to produce a second try. Somehow, though, the wing failed to touch down as the full-back Andy Muirhead arrived to tackle him.
Happily for Lowe he made no mistake in the same left corner after 29 minutes following another slick handling sequence. If only all areas of the Lions’ game had been so precise; once again they were producing a mixed bag, peppered with a couple of frustrating penalties and more dropped balls at inconvenient moments.
It all helped to keep the Brumbies alive and they deserved their second try, more purposeful approach work and a long overhead pass allowing Corey Toole to narrow the gap. The Lions restored order when Russell and Curry put the lurking Smith away for a beautifully engineered team score. Another successful Russell conversion made it a nine‑point game at the interval and the margin increased when Ringrose combined with Smith and chased the latter’s chip ahead. Again, though, the Brumbies underlined their determination with a third try, this time for the replacement Hudson Creighton.
The player the locals had come to see was Mack Hansen, who played for the Brumbies before choosing to pursue his professional rugby dream in Ireland courtesy of his Cork‑born mother. He was just another teenager in the crowd in this equivalent game 12 years ago and was greeted with a few boos on his return. They were replaced by cheers, though, when Liam Bowron added the hosts’ fourth try with four minutes left to give the Lions more food for thought.
