Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
STEP IT UP, LADS
As All Blacks boss turns up heat on under-fire Gatland, Lions need to prove they’re not just lambs to the slaughter
ALL BLACKS boss Steve Hansen ended a day spent running rings round the Lions by mocking Warren Gatland. Hansen watched his team warm up for next week’s series opener by mercilessly trouncing Samoa 78-0. The 12-try masterclass was only marginally more comprehensive than the job Hansen did on the Lions in the series-opening mind game. The Kiwi started out by revealing the opposition will call for reinforcements on Monday – a move the Lions only admitted to once it had been exposed. Hansen then suggested Gatland had given up on half his players, saying: “He clearly wants to bring them in so he can have two squads.” Lions players lined up to rubbish talk of a split. Hansen had already moved on. “He keeps telling us he has something up his sleeve other than his arm,” he said of Gatland. “He’s starting to run out of time.” Hansen’s strategy smacks of the way Eddie Jones went for Michael Cheika before, during and after England’s historic whitewash of Australia last summer. Bookies expect this series to go the same way. Nothing they saw from the world champions’ near-flawless display at Eden Park will have changed that. “Unf***ingbelievable” Lions prop Joe Marler later tweeted, without elaborating. Here in Rotorua today the Lions get to give a more considered response when they take on the Maori All Blacks. They need to make it count. This is the final dress rehearsal, given Gatland has made it clear Tuesday’s game against the Chiefs will not involve any of the Test 23. And they go into it with the heat on to put the tour on track after the morale-sapping loss in Dunedin four days ago. Not only is their star turn Owen Farrell injured and a doubt for the Auckland opener, tour captain Sam Warburton only makes the bench. Into this vexed environment will enter up to eight Welsh and Scottish reinforcements on the basis of being in the neighbourhood, rather than being the most deserving cases. Gatland will realise how unfair that is on the likes of Joe Launchbury and Dylan Hartley, in Argentina with England. But right now he has his hands full trying to build a competitive Test XV. His priority has to be on getting a tune out of Johnny Sexton at fly-half, on cutting the penalty count and on instilling belief into his back three – given the Lions have seen next to nothing yet from their outside backs. It is way too soon to pass judgement on this tour party and last night Irish flanker Sean O’brien struck a defiant tone. “I’d be lying if I said we shouldn’t be expecting to beat the All Blacks with the calibre of player we have and the depth of squad we have,” he said. “I don’t see an aura in terms of them being unbeatable. They’re a group of guys exactly like us.”