‘Backline glue’ will stick to his strengths
Yet after leaving captain Sam Warburton on the bench and delivering a few selection surprises – notably the more elusive Liam Williams over Leigh Halfpenny at fullback – Gatland was seemingly suggesting the Lions would break ranks at Eden Park and attack the All Blacks.
‘‘Now it’s about bringing other parts of our game, which is about playing with some flair and taking some risks and being courageous and bold,’’ Gatland said. ‘‘That’s the way to beat the All Blacks.’’
That may be true. The All Blacks have lost only four games since Steven Hansen assumed control in 2012, with the opposition averaging 33 points across those defeats. Whether the Lions are capable, or indeed need that many, remains to be seen.
Pressed on the Lions’ apparent new-found attacking intent, Gatland bristled at the suggestion a clash of styles was brewing.
When it was explained to him that theory evolved from what the majority of the Lions test team showed in victories over the Crusaders and New Zealand Maori, Gatland reined in his initial statements to say his men would attack at select moments.
‘‘We squeezed the life out of those two teams. We won’t stop being aggressive defensively. To play against the All Blacks you’ve got to have a strong set piece because they’re traditionally very dominant in that area.
‘‘We’ve created opportunities and early on in the tour we weren’t finishing off the line breaks but it was pleasing to see on Tuesday we started to do that.
‘‘The message to the players will be to go out and do that on Saturday night.
‘‘A lot of people have speculated about the contrasting styles but I think we’ve played some lovely
If Crotty is concerned about coming straight off a rib injury in to a largely unfamiliar position at test level to face the experienced Jonathan Davies he’s giving no signs of it. The opposite, in fact - he says he’s ‘‘excited’’.
’’It’s not easy, but you’ve got to trust your process around your preparation, all I can concentrate on is how well I can prepare.
‘‘Second-five in the way we defend is a little more confrontational that 13; 13 you have to defend a lot more space, but I’ve played both positions quite a lot and I’m confident I’ll be able to do the job at 13.’’
All Blacks coach Steve Hansen said he had three world-class midfielders, so one had to miss out. Lienert-Brown would get a chance later in the match when the defence loosened up.
‘‘ALB is very much a Sonny player, very good on the offload, very good coming in and taking advantage of any space,’’ he said.
‘‘We’re picking there’s not going to be a lot of that early in the game. Ryan is a more experienced, heady player, he’s been around long time and gives us the ability to go into the first part of the match and use ALB as someone who can do something different,’’ Hansen said.
Crotty has watched all the Lions’ tour matches taking in their rush defence, working on ways to negate it, and studying how their midfielders operated - how they offloaded, what lines they ran.
‘‘There’s a certain trend in the way they play, all the midfielders they’ve had are strong, direct, good ball-carrying midfielders, that’s one trait of northern hemisphere rugby.
If he did his own role, and trusted others to do theirs ‘‘it should be good’’. rugby. We struggled at the start of the tour but I think we’ve scored nine tries to three in the last four games.
‘‘I can’t fault the players if we’re dominating up-front and we’re not going to go away from that. We’re not going to be talked into playing Barbarian-type rugby when we’ve got certain weapons we’re able to use to our advantage.’’ Chat live with Mark Reason about the Lions tour from midday on Tuesdays and Fridays.