Blues 22 Lions 16
Conventional wisdom always had it that as abbreviated modern-day tours in the professional era of ten matches or so go, this was the most daunting tour imaginable. Well, everything about what transpired in the Lions’ second match against the Blues in Auckland’s Eden Park confirmed it. This tour is exactly what it said on the tin.
The Blues are good, darned good. They have loads of athletic rugby players, hard carriers and players with a high skill-set. One could see why Bristol must have shelled out handsomely to acquire Steven Luatua in his prime. The ballast and offloading of Sonny Bill Williams remains top drawer, and the Lions will assuredly encounter him again in all black. Reiko Ioane scored one try, but looked capable of scoring every time he came in contact with the ball.
They are the poorest of the five New Zealand Super Rugby teams, but then again these things are relative. The Blues have been together since before the start of the calendar and had 13 competitive matches under the belt. Some of these Lions were only introduced to each other for the first time last Sunday week. Seriously.
Out of contention in Super Rugby, this was their Cup final. With over 40,000 in attendance on a night when the rain came in occasional outbursts, they were hugely pumped for their biggest game of the season.
Better scrum
Yet this was a match which the Lions should have won and certainly could have won. They had the better scrum, but despite this yielding six points directly, were short-changed by Pascal Gauzere. They had the better lineout, and their maul earned them seven points.
They also had more possession and more territory, yet despite keeping their shape in attack through several phases, lacked penetration and an offloading game. The Lions were unlucky to concede a try just before half-time, when a penalty by Blues' 20-year-old full debutant, Stephen Perofeta rebounded off an upright and the TMO Marius Jonker somehow decreed that the ball was then deflected back over the try-line by Jack Nowell, when it looked for all the world that TJ Faiane had knocked it forward, before Sonny Bill Williams pounced on the loose ball.
Ultimately though, the game was decided, fittingly, by its most outstanding passage of play, as first Luatua popped the ball out of his right hand to release Williams for a big gallop, and then he offloaded for replacement outhalf Ihaia West to skim past Johnny Sexton and Leigh Halfpenny untouched, and convert himself.
That said, it was facilitated by an over-pumped Maro Itoje leaving the gap in which Williams made the initial inroads.
“The offloading is only going to continue so we have to be a little bit better in stopping the offloading game,” Gatland said. “Generally we did that really well, I thought our line speed defensively coped with that. It was a moment of magic which you do get from New Zealand teams.”
“We need to cut down on the number of errors and for me, it’s that moment where you have to stop the momentum. We need to look back at the try and how we went low in the tackles, so we need to make sure we go higher in those tackles to try and prevent the players getting the ball away in the offload situation.
So where do the Lions go from here? Well Christchurch to begin with, in readiness for Saturday’s meeting with Crusaders, who are 14 wins from 14 games this season, and ought to have all their All Blacks in situ.
New frontrow
The Lions will almost certainly bring in the 11 players who have yet to start on this tour. So it seems highly probable that Mako Vunipola, Jamie George and Tadhg Furlong will form a new frontrow, with George Kruis coming into the secondrow, along with Peter O’Mahony and Seán O’Brien in the backrow.
Conor Murray and Owen Farrell will form a new partnership at half-back, with Jonathan Davies in midfield, and George North and Liam Williams making their first tour starts in the back three.
The possibility is that Alun Wyn Jones, Ross Moriarty, Ben Te’o and Stuart Hogg will be among the few players on the bench this time around.
In any event, the Lions can make things a little easier for themselves. "There were a lot of positives and things to improve on defensively and the other big message from Andy Farrell to the players was the penalty count and penalties that were avoidable," said Warren Gatland.
The main thing was discipline. You can't afford to be giving these teams, or the All Blacks, a lot of penalties because they will punish us
“In the first two games we had been a bit soft in that area and we have to be hard on ourselves as players and coaches to make sure we definitely tighten up in that, because it is causing us a few issues and hopefully we’ll see a big improvement on that on Saturday.”
There were so many avoidable penalties – Courtney Lawes grappling with Akira Ioane in the air at a lineout, Rhys Webb creeping up offside at the fringe of a ruck – that the post-match mantra from the players suggests it was an issue in the dressing-room.
“Our discipline cost us,” said Webb. “Give a team like that chances and they finish them. We felt it was one that got away. There were a lot of boys coming in for their first start. The main thing was discipline. You can’t afford to be giving these teams, or the All Blacks, a lot of penalties because they will punish us. It’s a big area throughout the squad that we need to put right.”
Webb was adamant that these flaws were fixable.
“Gats has already said he’s going to give boys opportunities to play. We know there’ll be a lot of changes. We want to try and keep the momentum going forward, but you’ve got to learn as well. We’ve taken a bit of a hit today but we’re not going to panic, we’re going to keep our heads up. I’m sure the boys who haven’t played yet are going to come into the squad on Saturday and get us back to winning ways. We should be positive, we played some goods rugby at times and there’s easy fixes.”
Scoring sequence: 7 mins R Ioane try, 0-5; 17 mins Stander try, Halfpenny con 5-7; 25 mins Halfpenny pen 5-10; 40 (+3 mins) Williams try, Perofeta con 12-10; (half-time 12-10); 53 mins West pen 15-10; 68 mins Halfpenny pen 15-13; 71 mins Halfpenny pen, 15-16; 74 mins West try and con 22-16.
BLUES: M Collins; M Duffie, G Moala, S B Williams, R Ioane; S Perofeta, A Pulu; O Tu'ungafasi, J Parsons (capt), C Faumuina, G Cowley-Tuioti, S Scrafton, A Ioane, B Gibson, S Luatua. Replacements: TJ Faiane for Duffie (40+2 mins to half-time) and for Moala (67 mins), I West for Perofeta (53 mins), A Hodgman for Tu'ungafasi, S Mafileo for Faumuina, J Tupou for Cowley-Tuioti (all 57 mins), K Pryor for Gibson (67 mins), H Faiva for Parsons, Sam Nock for Pulu (both 71 mins).
BRITISH & IRISH LIONS: L Halfpenny (Wal); J Nowell (Eng), J Payne (Ire), R Henshaw (Ire), E Daly (Eng); D Biggar (Wal), R Webb (Wal); J McGrath (Ire), K Owens (Capt, Wal), D Cole (Eng), M Itoje (Eng), C Lawes (Eng), J Haskell (Eng), J Tipuric (Wal), CJ Stander (Ire). Replacements: J Sexton (Ire) for Biggar (36 mins), L Williams (Wal) for Payne (48 mins), J Marler (Eng) for McGrath, P O'Mahony (Ire) for Haskell (54 mins), K Sinckler (Eng) for Cole (55 mins), R Best (Ire) for Owens (69 mins), I Henderson (Ire) for Lawes, G Laidlaw (Scot) for Webb (both 76 mins). Sin-binned: L Williams (57-67 mins).
Referee: P Gauzere (France).
