Rowntree: Quick ball essential to beating All Blacks
FORWARDS guru Graham Rowntree knows the Lions will have to match New Zealand up front if they are to win their second consecutive tour but he is adamant he has the quality in his squad to do so.
Looking after the set piece alongside Steve Borthwick, Rowntree wants his pack to lay the perfect platform from No.8s Billy Vunipola and Taulupe Faletau to attack from.
“I absolutely believe we can go toe to toe with the forward pack, we’re going to have to,” he said. I want a platform to play, hook ball, we’ve got to play to beat these teams. I want usable quick ball. I want us to play.
“We have to be combative as a forward pack, that’s where me and Steve are putting our attentions around set piece and the breakdown. The breakdowns are going to be everything against this group, more than anything in the past.
“We picked a squad to do that and it’s pretty exciting. There are some good lads there, some experience, some guys who can play and you’ve got some young bucks in there as well just to stir things up a bit in training.”
One of these young buck will be 24-year-old rookie Kyle Sinckler who has been picked despite not making a single start for England in his eight caps.
But from working with him at club level at Harlequins, Rowntree is full of confidence for the abrasive youngster.
He said: “We wouldn’t have taken him if we didn’t trust him implicitly. It’s a Lions tour, you can’t take a development pick, you’ve got to back him.
“I’ve worked with him day in and day out for the best part of eight or nine months and I like what I see coming off the bench for England, in the Six Nations in particular, making dents, line breaks, and a turnover down in Cardiff helped England secure the game. But his bread & butter is in scrummaging, and I like what he’s doing there.
“He’s got an energy about him, it’s infectious. He can bring things to the game a lot of props can’t but he’s not the finished article and he knows that.
“He’s an angry young man and we’ve got to make sure that energy is put in the right areas. It’s up to me to keep him thinking about the right things.”