Tedious tactics highlight the north-south divide
Warren Gatland’s men show they can only win ugly and it won’t be enough.
A world haka record in the afternoon, with nearly 8000 people in Rotorua chanting towards the Lions’ hotel.
Could their game with the New Zealand Maori team be anything but a tour highlight?
For a mad three or four minutes after kick-off it looked as the Lions were so inspired by the occasion they were determined to win with passing and back play. Then came the rest of the match.
The Maori side fell short, afflicted at times with some of the fumbles that the Crusaders suffered last weekend.
The Lions played to their strengths and, after losing in Dunedin, they needed the win.
In the process we were treated to every aspect of the Lions’ attacking game, all three of them. The long kick, the high kick, and the chase.
Does it matter how you play, a Lions’ fan might say, as long as you win?
After all the Lions aren’t the Harlem Globetrotters. Success on the tour will be measured in wins and losses, and, as the 1971 Lions showed, nobody remembers that in the tests they scored fewer tries than the All Blacks and that Barry John relentlessly steered his side to victory by kicking. Not by running.
So fair play to the 2017 weekend side (the midweek B team are a whole other story) for deciding it’s better to win ugly than to lose pretty.
But dear Lord, the execution is tedious.
No fair person could not say that Conor Murray isn’t a fantastic kicking halfback. Under pressure he can still drill a ball downfield with not only remarkable power and distance, but with extraordinary accuracy.
Which is fine. But watching him boot the ball over and again begins to feel like watching the movie Groundhog Day with all the jokes taken out.
There are some terrific players in the Lions squad. Maro Itoje has everything you’d ask in the modern lock. He offers sure hands in the lineout, and athleticism crossed with real bite in general play.
Taulupe Faletau is a brutal runner, and Sean O’Brien a flanker so tough and hard-edged he’s basically a roll of barbed wire in boots.
What’s a pity is that the Lions don’t seem to regard the platform their forwards provide as a starting point, more as an end in itself.
And after the humbling of Manu Samoa at Eden Park it’s clear there is one massive divide between the All Blacks and the Lions.
When it comes to skills with the ball in motion, the Lions are at primary school level compared to the double degree with honours the All Blacks achieved on Friday night. Clearly now the only possible way for the Lions to be competitive in the test next Saturday is to play the grinding rugby they did last night.
I don’t actually say that to jeer. Having grown up in the 1960s I know that was the way the All Blacks used to play until Fred Allen came along and changed everything from 1966.
As the great Colin Meads told me last month when we talked for a magazine story on Lions’ tours, ‘‘Until Fred we’d win by two or three points, and think we’d had a hell of a good game.’’
But in 2015 the All Blacks showed in the final rounds of the Rugby World Cup it was possible to play exciting, dynamic running rugby, and still win.
For the game itself it would be deeply sad if by rushing defence, which ceaselessly pushes offside lines, good kick chases, and superb goal-kicking, the Lions won the day.
Could anyone in the Lions’ camp keep a straight face and argue against the idea that Beauden Barrett on his own didn’t produce more brilliant touches in 40 minutes of the second half at Eden Park than the entire Lions’ squad has managed on the whole tour to date?
Like many who have loved the courage and flair Manu Samoa has brought to the world stage since 1991 my heart broke a little watching them over-run by the All Blacks, and the Lions will provide an entirely different challenge next weekend. But if teams like Brazil and The Netherlands can be said to have made football the beautiful game, the All Blacks are doing the same with rugby.