Watson: We don’t fear competing aerially
The British and Irish Lions will not fear competing for the ball in the air when they come up against the high-flying All Blacks, despite the way that the squad has reacted to the yellow card that Liam Williams picked up early in the tour, says Anthony Watson.
Williams was sin-binned after he committed a second high tackle on Blues wing Matt Duffie in as many minutes during the second game of the tour, and it appeared to have a notable impact on the mentality of the wings when going up to compete for the high ball in their subsequent games with the Crusaders and the Chiefs.
With Watson and George North starting on the wing against the Maori All Blacks this Saturday in what looks the most likely Test back-three that Warren Gatland has selected so far on the tour, the wide men have discussed how they are competing in the air and the need to start winning more challenge against the opposition.
“Yes, we do discuss it,” said Watson. “We reviewed that again after the Crusaders and Highlanders game. We should be aiming to win more aerial contests than we have done, especially when we have guys like Webbie [Rhys Webb], Greig [Laidlaw]and obviously Conor [Murray] who are putting their contestable kicks on the money. We need to win those ones back to reward them for giving us the opportunity.”
The fact that both Williams and North struggled to compete in the air against the Crusaders when Murray was at scrum-half, given the Irishman is regarded as one of the finest box-kickers currently in world rugby, raised suggestions that the Lions are lacking in confidence following Williams’ yellow card.
But Watson, whose aerial ability has seen him regularly deployed at full-back during his career that included the game against the Crusaders, insists that the wings have not lost their confidence in fear of being sanctioned. “I don’t think so. I don’t feel it,” Watson said. “I personally think some of the calls were a bit harsh on Liam, but you can’t let that affect you mentally. It’s part of the game, you have to go up for it and have no doubt you’re going to win the ball back. I don’t think it’ll affect anybody.”
He added: “You have to be ready. The kicking in the Highlanders game was of high quality from them. They put it in areas between the wingers and full-back. It’s an area for us to improve 100 per cent. We shored it up a bit today and will continue to do so for Saturday.”
There is not much time to get it right though. While the Lions were preparing to put their training into practice against the Maori All Blacks, the senior side was busy tearing apart Samoa in a one-sided affair 140 miles to the north-west in Auckland.
The mechanics of catching a high ball could not be more simple on the face of things: time your jump, hold onto the ball and make sure you come back down to earth the right way up. Yet apply that into the heat of the battle that is a Test match where the opposite man is trying to do exactly the same – plus the added threat of mistiming it all by a split-second ending in a trip to the sin-bin – and it becomes much, much
harder to execute.
“It is difficult,” Watson explains. “Timing is massively important. You have got to try and get height as well. Going up for it offensively and defensively is different. It’s just understanding what you are trying to get out of it, where the opposition may be. There is a lot of things that do come into how you make a decision to go up for it or to stay down.”
Watson and Co can’t afford to get their timing wrong when it comes to facing the All Blacks. They will have been watching closely on Friday night as the All Blacks ran riot over the Samoans, running 78 points past them, and that was done with 15 men in front of them. Fall foul of the referee again on next Saturday, and the Lions will have no chance of ending their 46-year wait to conquer New Zealand.