‘Backline glue’ will stick to his strengths
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’’. dominant in that area.
‘‘We’ve created opportunities and early on in the tour we weren’t finishing off the line breaks but it