Why Boys of ’89 can inspire these cornered Lions
A shake-up in tactics and personnel secured an unlikely comeback in Australia 18 years ago, writes Mick Cleary
The British and Irish Lions have been here before, staring down the barrel of a series defeat after losing the first Test. Only twice in more than a century of contests have they managed to extricate themselves from such a predicament. The odds are stacked heavily against them, the portents bleak. Yet that was the same feeling 28 years ago in Australia. The Wallabies had thumped the Lions 30-12 in the first Test in Sydney, and the tourists had seven days in which to come up with a strategy and salvage reputations.
It sounds remarkably similar to what is happening in Wellington. True, the All Blacks are a class apart, but the Wallabies of that era were no slouches either, going on to win the Rugby World Cup two years later. The Lions had to come up with something – and they did. They made changes, five of them to Warren Gatland’s three, and they hit upon a radical change of emphasis. In came the Englandcentric pack, Wade Dooley replacing Robert Norster, with mighty Mike Teague on the blindside. Gatland has opted for a different approach, too, pairing Jonathan Sexton and Owen Farrell as midfield playmakers.
What binds the two tours is a sense that you have to do something different. The Lions do not follow the normal patterns or mores of an international side. There is no development programme for them, no need to worry about continuity. They have a couple of shots to get it right.
Robert Jones, the Wales scrumhalf, was very aware of that. “We knew that it was our last chance, that if we lost that weekend we might as well go home, and our place in history was gone,” he said. “Geech [Ian Mcgeechan, the head coach], Finlay Calder [captain] and Clive Rowlands [manager] stressed that all week in the build-up. Not many have ever won a series. Not many would in the future. This was an opportunity to make history.”
Jones was the unlikely figure at the centre of the Lions’ new game plan – unlikely in that Jones was a supreme stylist as a scrum-half, balanced and poised. Yet he was given a different role to play – to get at his opposite number, Nick Farr-jones, the Wallaby captain, the motor of the team the previous week. The instruction was simple: stand on his foot at the first scrum.
“No, it isn’t my normal way of doing things,” Jones told The Daily
Telegraph. “Farr-jones was the biggest influence on the Wallabies’ performance – a great scrum-half and a great captain. Geech’s belief was that if we managed to knock Farr-jones off his game they wouldn’t be as effective. He had gone on about doing just that, mentioning that Dougie Morgan had managed to rattle the great Gareth Edwards. Geech was brilliant as a man-manager. He referenced it every time he saw me that week, so that by the time it came to Saturday it had got right under my skin and I knew I had to do a job.”
The ploy worked in 1989. Farr-jones retaliated at that first scrum, the diminutive scrumhalves going at it like ferrets in a sack as they tumbled to the floor, grappling and swinging.
The two forward packs followed, smashing into each other. It was a crude approach, but it had the desired effect. The Wallabies were rattled, they got distracted and the Lions eventually came through to win 19-12, in what became known as The Battle of Ballymore. The series was clinched the following week in Sydney.
“The tactics did ambush us but, looking back, they were right,” acknowledged Farr-jones. “It still amazes me how Geech got into Robert’s ear about the importance of putting me off my game. His instructions to Robert and the whole pack, basically, was to beat the c--- out of Farr-jones, he has got the ‘c’ next to his name, he’ll implode and the team will unravel around him.
“To an extent it is what unfolded. I got a bit dishevelled. I certainly didn’t play my best game. I started to lose focus, the team lost structure. I have no problems with the Lions’ tactics.
“My only problem is that we didn’t stand toe-to-toe with it and if I have any regrets in my career it is that we didn’t beat those b-----s. We got hijacked.”
Over to the 2017 Lions.