DAN STATES HIS CASE, BUT WELSH WOE SPOILS OCCASION
THE British and Irish Lions can reflect with satisfaction on a 28-10 warm-up win against Japan, which they dictated for all but brief spells at Murrayfield.
But the real business in South Africa is ahead, in particular the threetest showdown against the world champion Springboks.
So as Warren Gatland and his men prepare to board their flight to the Rainbow Nation, who will the coach be classing as winners and losers from the outing against the Japanese?
WINNERS GATLAND AND HIS COACHING TEAM
Whatever work was done on the pretour training camp in Jersey, it was evidently done well.
And it was work done without a number of the English contingent who were still completing club duties.
It’s early days of course, but there was a clinical edge and a general team understanding on show that suggested some considerable strides have been made on the training ground and perhaps, too, in some of the booze-fuelled socialising that has gone on.
Every time a Lions tour comes around much is made, and rightly so, about the challenge of forging an allfor-one identity and spirit. This will obviously still be in development, but all you can say is that Gatland’s players each looked as though they knew their jobs, understood the game-plan and how to bring the best out of team mates they aren’t especially familiar with.
That’s a testimony to player buy-in of course, but first and foremost to the coaching and management group.
DAN BIGGAR AND OWEN FARRELL
Dan Biggar set the standard against Japan with a display of all-round assuredness and authority that suggested he can make the No. 10 Test jersey his own.
But there’s a long way to go, and what Biggar’s performance should do is have a galvanising effect on his rivals Owen Farrell and indeed Finn Russell.
Biggar, despite his excellence at Murrayfield, will know nothing is set in stone.
Farrell and Russell should have got the message that only their very best from here on will do if they are to get past the Wales star.
It may be Farrell ends up in a senior leadership role, following the misfortune to strike Alun Wyn Jones. Will he be chosen at 10 or 12 for the Test matches?
Gatland is the big winner, because all three 10s have different, yet potent qualities.
The Lions No. 10 jersey is probably as mythical as the Wales one. It is not won easily.
There could well be one heck of a fight for it over the course of the next few weeks.
TADHG BEIRNE
It seems almost ludicrous that Beirne came to Wales to play for the Scarlets six years ago as someone who couldn’t get a provincial contract in his homeland.
If he plays a part in a victorious Lions Test series winning side, his career will be a genuine rags-to-riches tale.
The sight of him streaking away to score a second-half try against Japan, showing the intelligence to run a great angle and the pace to finish off the chance, will have warmed spirits either side of the Irish Sea.
The Lions back row, as has been well documented, is a ferociously competitive department.
But it will take a good man to displace Beirne if he can maintain this sort of form.
KYLE SINCKLER
It was only a matter of weeks ago that
Sinckler was being lauded for a philosophical and magnanimous take on his initial exclusion from the Lions squad, a selection call that shocked many.
Fast forward to Saturday afternoon and there he is as a rampaging second-half substitute against Japan, making his case for that coveted Test cap.
In a way it’s not surprising because injuries do tend to open doors in rugby in a manner that they do not in other sports – and Sinckler was always going to be a viable potential reserve.
All the same, the man so highly rated by Welsh legend Adam Jones who has coached him at The Stoop, must have felt like it was Christmas at Murrayfield.
From despair to the sheer focused joy of pulling on that Lions jersey and playing the game at the very pinnacle.
Another to put down a Test marker.
Where else do you start?
The Lions skipper ruled out before the plane has even left for South Africa. So, too, Tipuric, who had genuine claims to be the starting No. 7 in the Tests.
These are cruel blows for the Ospreys pair.
Jones is an outstanding leader and being named Lions captain was an honour he deserved.
And even accounting for his incredible durability, he won’t be around as a player in four years’ time.
The same is likely for Tipuric, one of the finest players of his generation.
Luck ran out on them at Murrayfield.
They deserved better.
THE PLAYERS NOT INVOLVED
This could so easily have turned out to be a good game to miss for those who weren’t selected.
Had it been a disappointing Lions display, a scruffy unconvincing victory or, perish the thought, a defeat, those players watching in the stands would have been glad to be precisely where they were.
But while the Lions showing was no cause for an open-top bus parade, it was solidly impressive to the extent where you would struggle to find anyone in a red shirt who did themselves any harm.
So those who didn’t play will feel that those who did have stolen a march on them for a Test place. And they’d be right.
Of course, they will get their opportunity. But the pressure on them has increased.
THE FANS
It’s not something that arose specifically
out of this encounter, but events at Murrayfield did hammer the point home.
The fact that fans are being denied the chance to travel to South Africa for this tour really is a sporting tragedy.
The Lions are travelling with a fearsomely strong squad and the signs at Murrayfield were that it will be moulded together well enough to negate most of the traditional problems touring sides have previously experienced.
The undercooked Springboks are as big a scalp as always given their world champion status but under the circumstances are there for the taking.
This would have been a wonderful trip to have been on, but Covid had put paid to that.
It cannot be helped, but all the same the situation leaves you shaking your head in resignation.