& AGONY
BRITISH & IRISH LIONS 15
Davies, who combined with Elliot Daly to put Sean O’brien over.
“When they can score tries like that, you’re thinking they should probably do that more often,” Hansen observed dryly.
The Lions could not. Not yesterday at least. They succeeded only in shooting themselves in the foot.
Taylor scored after Daly dropped his guard and allowed New Zealand to take a quick tap-and-go.
Their much-vaunted scrum got it all wrong when allowing the hosts to get the shove on. And man of the match, Kieran Read, took advantage to make the first of Ioane’s two tries with a quite sublime pass off the floor.
And finally Williams spoiled his earlier sparkling work by failing to field a high ball, enabling Ioane to pounce to regather and outpace Daly to the try line.
“This was the biggest game of my life, but there were ups and downs,” the full-back admitted.
“We’ll dust ourselves down and come back next week. Of course, we’re still optimistic, of course, we can come back.”
Today, the Lions fly to Wellington where they must use Tuesday’s game against the Hurricanes to both patch up their set-piece and clean up their act.