GALLAGHER VERDICT
Warren Gatland needs to pull a rabbit out of the hat this week
After a fractious week a game of rugby finally broke out, well in the second half anyway. The opening 40 minutes was a complete shambles, a bad-tempered bar room brawl of a half which rather shames the game. South Africa improved considerably after the break while the Lions disappeared off the radar in what was by some distance their worst performance under Warren Gatland.
Quite what all this means I haven’t quite processed but let’s deal with the first half and take it from there.
Both sides were always going to test Ben O’Keeffe and the officials given the build-up and rightly assumed they could pretty much get away with anything in the opening quarter because his career would be over if he started sending people off. He would either cop it from Rassie Erasmus or Warren Gatland, either way his name would be mud.
So in they piled. Skipper Alun Wyn Jones, nowhere near the force of last week, started an unnecessary melee and staring contest with Eben Etzebeth almost from the off and then Duhan van der Merwe hit Pieter-Steph du Toit with a nasty leg lift and dump tackle. Yellow all day long, possible red – Du Toit had to go off soon afterwards – but on this occasion just a penalty. Lucky Lions. Very lucky.
Then Cheslin Kolbe, hard as nails but always a fair player in my estimation, got Tom Curry with a head into the face – definite yellow, possible red – but escaped all sanction. Soon after he totally wiped out Conor Murray in the air as the Irishman jumped high for the ball on the touchline.
Kolbe made no attempt to jump or challenge. Definite red and probably four-week ban. Ridiculously, desperately, pleadingly O’Keeffe tried to argue that because Murray landed on his back – he could have broken it – it was somehow a lesser offence, as when a spear tackle victim somehow contorts to land on their shoulders and neck, not head.
It’s perfectly ok to have your neck or shoulder or collar bone broken, apparently, so long as it is not the head and skull!
Kobe’s offence is to recklessly play the man in the air while making no legitimate attempt to catch the ball. Kolbe was bang to rights but it would have started World War III had O’Keeffe produced red and sent the poster boy player off. Disgracefully the world’s highest paid waterboy Rassie Erasmus, below, as he does these day, chose this key moment for one of his many excursion onto the pitch sans water bottle, dressed in his high-vis yellow jacket and ridiculous baseball cap. For some reason he reminds me of Jim Rockford from the Rockford Files.
He has no right to be there at all, other than at half-time mind, when coaching staff are allowed on the field of play if the team chooses to stay on the pitch for the break. Erasmus, by the way, is insisting on more consistency from Test refs – in which case I feel sure his video nasty this week will be concerned mainly with how Kolbe should have been sent off. Clearly it would be hypocritical to gloss over such gross inconsistencies!
At last we reached the second half and something resembling rugby. It had been pretty depressing to be honest coming just a few hours after the glories of the women’s
Sevens Olympic finals day in Japan. There we witness uncomplaining legal physicality, warriors in deed, but smiling and fair minded.
The wonderful world of the wisecracking, big-hitting Kiwi skipper Ruby Tui seemed a million miles away from this mean-spirited affair. I know which rugby occasion will have attracted the most new rugby fans yesterday.
But it did improve, thank god, and all the good stuff came from South Africa as the Lions faded worryingly and scarcely fired a shot in anger.
Their forwards on this occasion couldn’t handle the Boks bomb sqaud and the heroes of last week Maro Itoje, Courtney Lawes and Alun Wyn Jones had no impact.
It was strangely inept and there was no Plan B. The Lions have got to start playing some rugby, they are getting sucked into the Boks game.
Gatland’s men caught the Boks cold last week but that won’t happen again so its Hail Mary time.
Behind the scrum jokers in the pack Finn Russell or Marcus Smith could come into play, ditto Liam Williams and Louis Rees-Zammitt.
This will be the most testing week of Gatland’s Lions career.
This is an infinitely more wounding defeat than the second Test reverse the Lions suffered in Australia in 2013. He has got to pull a rabbit out of the hat from somewhere.
The slightly eccentric reffing also continued. Lukhanyo Am’s try, the decider, looked dodgy from the off with no discernible pressure from the palm of his hand as he lunged with it bouncing towards the Dead Ball Line.
The first camera angle looked 50 50 no try. But the second angle from behind the goal was much clearer – no try.
Except that the TMO Marius Jonker told O’Keeffe there was only one angle – the first one – and therefor that Mr O’Keeffe could award the try. Even the uber diplomatic Nigel Owens was spluttering disbelief up in the commentary box for that one.
And so to the decider. It feels like a special game and I wonder if even at this late stage they could switch to historic Newland which lays fallow and empty.
The Cape Town stadium, where the Lions have played their last four game on tour, is driving me crazy with its perfect homogenous, pluperfect symmetry and shining perfection. The pitch is also fast becoming something of a cabbage patch. Could we perhaps dream? All you need is a Test sized pitch and some gantries to put the cameras on, Newlands still has that.
Regardless, the Lions must plot the mother of all comebacks.
And talking of comebacks it is heartening to see that Miles Harrison, after his recent bout with cancer, is poised for a return to commentary box, where Conor McNamara has been deputing ablym, for the third test. Cometh the hour cometh the man.
“Erasmus’ video nasty this week will be concerned with how Kolbe should have been sent off”