SHANE McGRATH
Chief Sports Writer
‘FURLONG CAN BE THE BEST PROP THIS COUNTRY HAS PRODUCED’
ATIE may be the official verdict, but the winners from this tour are clearly identifiable. Warren Gatland is one. His many critics, this one included, must admit our error and recognise the success of his leadership of the squad. He made mistakes, most notably calling up sub-standard players on a basis other than sporting merit, but the decisive calls he made his own.
Making Sam Warburton the tour captain looked wrong to these eyes, as did dropping Peter O’Mahony in preference for the Welshman after the first Test, but those choices were the right ones based on what we saw in Auckland.
Warburton was marvellous in play, but his success in convincing Romain Poite to go to the television match official for the late controversy involving Ken Owens’ accidental offside was a diplomatic triumph of near-Kissinger proportions.
It left Kieran Read flabbergasted, but it was a moment of remarkable leadership.
Gatland has also shown himself to be a judicious selector, as he did in 2013. Then, he dropped Brian O’Driscoll and trusted Jonathan Davies, and he was justified, in the face of an embarrassing outcry in this country.
He had faith in Davies again for this series, despite the centre bringing little in the way of consistent form with him to New Zealand. He was terrific, the best back on show on either side over the three Tests.
Sticking by Alun Wyn Jones won Gatland reward, and he also stayed true to his established practice of having confidence in young players. It is probably his most admirable quality as a coach, and in this case it has helped to make Maro Itoje a star of the game globally.
On the biggest and most important calls, Gatland was correct and that needs to be recognised. He even got away with picking both Johnny Sexton and Owen Farrell. The Englishman was poor in the second Test and at times terrible in the third, but no harrowing price had to be paid for his errors.
Joe Schmidt is another who will have watched this tour and felt a beneficiary of the Lions’ excellence. Irishmen powered the men in red; many come home with reputations forged or enhanced. Tadhg Furlong does not turn 25 until the middle of November, but after the past 12 months, and in particular the last fortnight, he deserves to be called world class. If he stays free of significant injuries, he will play in two more Lions Test series. Furlong will also anchor Ireland for years to come, and if he maintains this pace of improvement, he will be the best prop the country has produced. As good as Furlong in New Zealand was Conor Murray. The scrum-half position demands authority; it runs from Murray as naturally as sweat. He excels against the best team in the world time and again, and along with Furlong, he is now established as Schmidt’s most important player. That used to be Sexton. He turns 32 on Tuesday, and he will feel all those years and a few more this morning. The out half took his customary pummelling from opposing players, and was subjected to yet another head injury assessment in Eden Park.
He played well, but be sure it will have annoyed him that Farrell and not he was kicking the placed balls. That Sexton (right) managed to lift his performances so markedly above those that closed his domestic season with Leinster spoke to his competitiveness as much as his talent.
However, he needs minding and Schmidt will surely demand that he is nursed through the season with Leinster.
O’Mahony enjoyed the biggest honour of any Irishman in leading the Lions out for the first Test, and if his demotion from the match-day squad for the following two matches must have been devastating, he is flinty and will absorb the bad as well as the good from his experience.
Ireland should enjoy the results. O’Mahony is the outstanding candidate if Schmidt decides that the November series, two years ahead of the Japan 2019 World Cup, is the time to change captains.
Given that Rory Best is 35 in August, making that call in the new season seems sensible.
There is an even more important legacy for Ireland and every other Six Nations team from the 2017 Lions tour, however.
It has been shown that the style of rugby commonly preferred in the northern hemisphere is not the inferior, brutish, even hapless game we are lectured about after every World Cup.
If it is played properly, as the Lions did frequently in the second and third Tests on this tour, a game based on precise kicking and good set-pieces can succeed against the best side in the world.
It must, though, be augmented by excellent defence and ruthless accuracy at the breakdown. The Lions managed the latter two yesterday morning, and the result was a frustrated New Zealand.
Expansive play can only be facilitated by quick ball. If a good kicking game pins a team like the All Blacks back, they are forced to either kick in return or run back, and if they choose the second option then they can be slowed down.
They are, of course, a gifted side as they proved in 2015, but they are not unbeatable and, hallelujah, they can be defeated by a style of play too quickly rubbished as primitive.
Given Ireland have the best kicking scrum half in the world, this is greatly encouraging. Exposing a player like 25-year-old Josh van der Flier, the most natural breakdown snaffler in the country, to more Test experience would help develop a game-plan that can counter New Zealand more consistently. That is not to prematurely remove Sean O’Brien from considerations, even if the sight of him picking up a new injury yesterday reminds us of the rotten run he has had in that regard. However, there is merit in recasting O’Brien as a No8, because this series showed that CJ Stander, for all his bullocking enthusiasm, is too easily figured out by the opposing team. This is what happens in the aftermath of a Lions series: parochialism impels us to sift through the aftermath and pick out what is most useful to us in our own patch. Therefore, one final encouragement was the excellent Lions defence, under the care of Andy Farrell. Joe Schmidt has plenty to be pleased about, but not quite as much as Warren Gatland.