JULIAN SAVEA

MAIN WEAPON >>POWER

There’s no doubt that Julian Savea has ample pace. He is surprisingly agile, too, but the essence of his game is power.

He’s a big man. A really big man who weighs 108kg. And that’s him lean and in top condition. That’s his perfect weight.

He can run at his best at that weight. He can swerve, step and turn at that weight and most worrying for opponents is that when he’s in full flight, he is phenomenally powerful.

Plenty of defenders can hunt him down, get alongside him or in front of him to make the tackle. But the problem they face is that they can throw themselves at Savea, and he can bounce them o , keep his balance and carry on running.

That’s his most deadly attribute – that ability to knock tacklers over and still keep running. That’s what has made him such a deadly finisher. Teams fear him because they can be confident they know where he is going to run. They can get defenders on him, but they can’t always knock him down and Savea, heavily marked, crosses for a try because his raw power is too much to contain.

In 2014 All Blacks coach Steve Hansen went on record to say that he felt Savea had surpassed the great Jonah Lomu as a player.

“I think he’s probably better,” Hansen said. “He can do more things than Jonah. Jonah was a great player but I think Julian has got more to his game than Jonah.

“That’s really saying something but I genuinely believe that. He’s very good going back. He’s very good under the high ball. He’s very good over the ball on the ground as well as being a great ball carrier.”

STRIKE RATE

Some players have a higher strike rate than Savea, but they will have played a fraction of the games. Compared fairly against players with similar experience, Savea has the best strike rate in history. That pretty much says it all. Give him the ball and he will score.

Four times he has scored a hat trick for the All Blacks and the worrying thing for the Lions is that Savea is currently in the midst of the longest barren spell of his test career. He hasn’t scored in his last three tests, which means he must be due and if he can score five more, he’ll become the highest try scorer in All Blacks history.