What's the plan without Brown?
HIGHLANDERS coach Tony Brown may be more than 9000km away but is still going to be heavily involved in the Highlanders game plan.
Brown will leave for Japan next week to help coach the national side, forcing him to not be the head coach for the Highlanders in the upcoming Super Rugby transtasman competition.
Brown was the Highlanders head coach and is also the Japan assistant coach.
Japan is due to play the British and Irish Lions in Edinburgh late next month and Brown is needed to help with preparation and get the Cherry Blossoms up to speed after 18 months of not playing.
Brown had mixed emotions about the move north.
‘‘It was very unfortunate but also exciting at the same time — trying to get Japan rugby back into playing test rugby,’’ he said.
‘‘Having not played for well over a year, almost two years, and playing the Lions in Scotland is a huge challenge for Japan rugby.
‘‘I’m pretty lucky as a rugby coach. Japan let me coach the Highlanders and the Highlanders let me coach Japan. And sometimes it is going to overlap, so it is just unfortunate the way it has worked out.
‘‘I have put myself in this situation as I want to coach both teams. I will be trying my best to make sure both teams win.’’
Brown said he had good conversations with Highlanders chief executive Roger Clark and understood the situation.
Brown will fly to Japan in the middle of next week where he will then enter two weeks of isolation. From there he will have two weeks with the team, then fly to Edinburgh for the game on June 26. Japan coach Jamie Joseph will be on the same flight north.
His two weeks in isolation will not be wasted, as Brown will still have an eye on the team back in Dunedin.
‘‘It is going to be different but I will still have a major role in planning for each game, making sure our plans are right on the money on how to win games of rugby.
‘‘And also reviewing games and making sure the teams have the right feedback, heading in the right direction. Obviously Derms [assistant coach Clarke Dermody] is going to be man on the ground here, driving the team forward every day.’’
‘‘I have 100% confidence in him
[Dermody] as a head coach. He has done that with Tasman.’’
Brown said it was tough to tell the players he was leaving.
‘‘We put a lot of effort into this campaign and it did not go our way the way we wanted it to.
‘‘It was a hard conversation to have with the leaders and a tough one with the players as well. But it is what it is. I will be on my best to make sure we can win every
game of rugby. That will be from Japan. The boys will do a good job I’m sure.’’
Brown said Highlanders No 8 Kazuki Himeno will play the game in Edinburgh. He would head to Scotland after the finish of the Super Rugby TransTasman competition.
‘‘The frustrating part about Covid is we have not been able to play any test rugby since the
World Cup. But we created a lot of momentum around Japan rugby in that time.
‘‘But it is 18 months now and we have not played a test. It is going to be a huge challenge for us but an exciting one for Japan rugby.’’
AUCKLAND: Warren Gatland has named a British and Irish Lions squad with plenty of surprises for the tour of South Africa, including New Zealander Bundee Aki among the bolters in the side.
Several big names were snubbed as Gatland mostly opted for form over reputation.
One selection in particular, picking Exeter No 8 Sam Simmonds over Kyle Sinckler, was labelled by one commentator as ‘‘a slap in the face for Eddie Jones’’, as Gatland opted for the player who has been continually overlooked by the England coach.
After a warmup game against Japan, at Murrayfield on June 26, the sixweek Lions tour is scheduled to start in July and currently will include five matches against South African domestic and development teams before three tests.
South Africa has had more than 1.5 million reported cases of Covid19 and more than 54,000 deaths. Its cases have been driven since late last year by a variant that experts says is more contagious.
Only 353,000 people out of a population of around 60 million have been vaccinated and they are health workers. Vaccines have not been rolled out for the general public.
It is still uncertain if fans will be allowed into games. SA Rugby has been trying to convince the South African government, with the hope of having 50% capacity in stadiums.
In the great Alun Wyn Jones, Gatland went with world rugby’s safest pair of hands as his captain.
The surprises were saved for elsewhere in the highly anticipated squad announcement.
One of the mostly evenly spread selections in Lions history overlooked some of the northern hemisphere’s biggest names.
No Jonathan Sexton, the Ireland captain who was world player of the year as recently as 2018 and top scorer in this year’s Six Nations.
No Billy Vunipola, the No 8 who has provided much of England’s goforward in the successful Eddie Jones era.
No Jonathan Davies, the reliable Wales centre, who was the Lions’ player of the drawn series against the All Blacks in 2017.
Gatland, understandably, wanted to focus on the players who were selected to go on a tour that was under threat until last month — and still carries with it major uncertainties because of the pandemic.
In a Lions squad that largely reflected this year’s highly competitive Six Nations, England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland all had eight to 11 representatives.
Eight Scots is the country’s highest number since 1989, perhaps showing the influence that Scotland coach Gregor Townsend — one of Gatland’s assistants — had on selection. One of them is Duhan van der Merwe, a South Africanborn winger who played for South Africa Under20s before switching nationalities, and was the top tryscorer in the Six Nations with five.
Jones, tour captain for the first time and in his his fourth straight Lions squad, is one of 10 players from Six Nations champion Wales.
England had 11, a lowerthananticipated contingent which highlighted the team’s struggles in the Six Nations but included Sam Simmonds, a No 8 without a test cap since March 2018. Quite why he has been ignored by Jones is a mystery, given he is the reigning European player of the year and a superstar for European champion Exeter.
Ireland’s eight players did not include 35yearold Sexton, a player Townsend called one of the ‘‘best players in the world’’.
‘‘Not only does it show the quality of the players we have in the squad,’’ Townsend said, ‘‘it probably shows what’s going to be a huge, physical demand on each player out there and he’s been unfortunate to miss out because of those reasons.’’
Owen Farrell, Dan Biggar and Finn Russell were the first fiveeighths chosen by Gatland, setting up what could prove to be the most competitive selection fights anywhere in the squad for the test series.
Other leading players overloo
ked were England pair Kyle Sinckler and Jonny May, and Ireland lock James Ryan. That Aki was selected ahead of Ireland teammate Garry Ringrose was another nod to the
physicality Gatland wants to throw at the Springboks, who have not played a game since winning the World Cup in November 2019, due to the pandemic.
‘‘It’s probably using the experience from the last tour, back in 2009,’’ said Gatland, who was an assistant coach that year when the Lions lost a brutal test series 21.
‘‘We played pretty well in the leadup but the physicality they brought to the first test was something we weren’t quite ready for.’’
One player Gatland could not do without is Jones.
He is one of the most respected players in rugby and holds the world record for test appearances at 157, nine of which have come in the last three Lions series. He led Wales to the Six Nations title in March and has been captain of his country permanently since 2017, when he was handed the role by thenWales coach Gatland.
The Lions’ selection of Simmonds, who has continually been overlooked by Jones for England despite his impressive form, is another example of the differences between Gatland and his old Aussie rival, Gavin Mairs, of The Telegraph, wrote.
‘‘By picking Sam Simmonds, and not selecting Kyle Sinckler . . . Warren Gatland has delivered the most stinging of rebukes to Eddie Jones,’’ he added.
‘‘Gatland has shown no hesitation in delivering the Australian — an old rival — a slap in the face with his previous Lions picks, but this year’s could be the most emphatic of all.’’ — The New Zealand Herald/AP