Pedigree of Irish giving tourists a mongrel’s chance of causing upset
WARREN GATLAND talked admiringly of Peter O’Mahony as a ‘Munster mongrel’. It is the Lions coach, though, who is relying on a scrapper’s spirit, and so far it has worked.
He will get to the morning of the first Test in six days’ time with his methods justified, even as critics accuse him of reducing the distinguished pride of Lions to a mongrel rabble.
Calling up a clutch of second-rate Welsh players to flesh out the midweek squad, and choosing them over better English and Irish ones simply because they were touring within a couple of hours of New Zealand, was pragmatism at its most brutal.
It has horrified those who regard the Lions traditions as principles that could have been carried by Moses off a mountainside. And it is undoubtedly true that picking players who are not Test class does devalue the shirt. A Scottish prop who spends matches moonwalking at scrums is also among the newcomers.
But Gatland did the same thing four years ago in Australia, with Shane Williams called up out of semi-retirement in Japan. He was two years gone from international rugby by then and was due in Australia to work as a radio pundit for the Test matches.
Tom Court got a game because he happened to be on holidays in his native Australia. Court would be regarded as a Lion in the same way a house-cat would, yet he served a purpose. There was some disquiet on the tour about Gatland’s policy, but Test victory justified all.
Winning has a way of doing that. The problem is that Australia, four years ago, were deep into the spiralling mediocrity from which they have yet to emerge. New Zealand, in contrast, are the best team to ever play the game.
Gatland has earned a week’s respite thanks to the comfortable win in Rotorua yesterday. The Munster mongrel disproved that tag, too, even if Gatland meant it as a compliment. O’Mahony is a player of the highest pedigree, and that should be franked in the coming days when he is announced as captain for the first Test in Auckland.
He was excellent again in rainy Rotorua, but seeing him grimace as medics fussed over his knee in the final quarter would have quickened the breathing of his supporters. For a player who is palpably hard and fearless, O’Mahony is susceptible to injury, but he ran off to be replaced by Sam Warburton and confirmed his health in an interview afterwards.
Had he not frightened the coaches with the need for that brief medical intervention, O’Mahony may well have played out the match. Before this game, the need for minutes for tour captain Warburton was said to be a priority. When the team was named and O’Mahony and Sean O’Brien were chosen as the flankers, the need shifted to Warburton getting an extended run off the bench. In the end, he got a bit more than 10 minutes.
That speaks not only to the fitness problems that should have precluded him from being chosen as captain, but also to the outstanding form in New Zealand of the Irish pair.
Like O’Mahony, O’Brien is a contradictory force, the bulldozing ball-carrier whose fitness is frailer than a butterfly’s wings. Provided neither of them pull up lame in the hours after the Maori win, however, they should pack down in Saturday’s date with the All Blacks.
Tadhg Furlong, Conor Murray and Johnny Sexton will bring the Irish representation up to five, and Iain Henderson and CJ Stander will compete for bench berths.
Gatland will name his team this week, but he is as interesting a news item as any of his selection quandaries.
He sulked when the natives teased him about Warrenball, but his best hope in Auckland is Schmidt-ball, for it is plain that Gatland is now pursuing the tactics Ireland deployed in beating New Zealand last November.
That involves pinning the opposition back with box kicks and tactical punts that force New Zealand’s deadly back three to turn into defensive duties, and then getting everything right in scrums and lineouts.
It will draw scorn from the All Blacks, but then they want everyone to try and play like them in full knowledge no one else can.
Misplaced ambitions have reduced plenty of teams to buckets of fish-bait against the world champions, and the fear was Gatland would be goaded into catastrophic defiance when he took such offence at the dismissal of his Wales approach at the start of the tour.
The evidence of the past two Saturdays brings comfort that Gatland will think beyond that. The likelihood is the Lions will still be beaten next Saturday. They could be pulled asunder.
But they are giving themselves grounds for whispered optimism.
They have at least a mongrel’s chance.