It was the night which, for those present, will be remembered first and foremost for the monsoon-like, almost tropical torrents of rain, coupled with a 37-minute postponement due to forecasts of nearby lightning. But it certainly seemed as if the Wallabies coped with both the conditions and the interruption better.
Neither Joe Schmidt nor Andy Farrell, nor probably anyone else at the Accor Stadium, could quite remember such an occasion. The Lions head coach subsequently expressed a fervent hope he would never experience such circumstance again.
“Rigor mortis was setting in at one stage there for the lads. I suppose that is what you come to expect with a schedule like the Lions schedule. We have seen it all now haven’t we,” said Farrell.
Asked how the Lions coped with the unscheduled postponement, which threatened to force an abandonment of the game, Farrell said: “We were trying to work out what the rules were and what was going to happen. At one stage it looked like it was going be 45 minutes, then it was pulled back to 30 minutes.
“There were updates constantly coming in but the lads stayed relaxed enough, had five minutes of a warm-up and got the show back on the road. What came off the back of that is Australia hit the ground running and thoroughly deserved their win.”
Had the interruption lasted closer to an hour, there was the real possibility the game would have been abandoned. In such a scenario, as the match had progressed past the halfway point, if only by less than three minutes, the Wallabies would have been declared winners.
Farrell was a good deal more phlegmatic, one would venture, about that possibility than if the result had been to decide the series.
“The rules are the rules and that is it, it is out of our control.”
However, it seemed as if the Wallabies were better prepared for the possibility of an interruption, as their captain Harry Wilson said afterwards: “It was the first time I’d had it. Joe said it to us before that it could happen and we had a plan in place for it. That helped. I think a few boys’ bodies got a bit tired, we’re happy to come off it and play well.”
Schmidt himself smiled ruefully, admitting: “It’s certainly one of the more bizarre ones. That’s the longest Test match I’ve ever been involved in with the big hiatus in the 43rd minute.
“But again, I couldn’t be prouder of the way the players rebounded off the last week of that feeling of disappointment that they had. It was deep. You almost had to let them feel it and then springboard back.”
Footage from the two dressingrooms during the halt in play differed greatly. The Lions players could be seen relaxing during the intermission, while Schmidt could be seen talking to his players, who were also working on their ball skills in the home dressingroom.
The Wallabies were also much quicker to return to the pitch, and were warming up for longer than the Lions before immediately resuming on the offensive before going on to extend their 8-0 lead into a 22-12 win.
“I’m not sure what they did, but I know what we did,” said Schmidt.
“We had been warned that there might be a bit of lightning, so we had a plan, and with that plan we made sure that guys kept moving.
“We had different guys rotating on and off the bikes, we’d four balls in the changing room so guys could throw them around, so that guys could stay connected.
“The rest of the time, it was just trying to get us organised for the restart. We knew we had a penalty to touch and a plan, until it didn’t work. The players stayed dialled in very well.”
Farrell reacted indignantly to the theory that the Wallabies were better ready for the resumption.
“That’s completely utter rubbish. Utter rubbish.”
Describing how they used the time, Farrell said: “You don’t know until you know and when you do know you have to agree the warm-up time allocated is going to be acceptable to both teams.
“We agreed on 10 minutes for the warm-up and through our advice from our experts in that field we only made the call to come out five minutes before and stay out there so that we would be ready to go.”
