What a terrible155 advert for rugby ...on and off field

THIS whole series — both on and off the field — has been a poor advertisement for the game of rugby. Something that promised so much, delivered so little. Across the three games, it was hard to watch at times. A lot of the stuff that happened off the field, the controversy of Rassie Erasmus as the water boy, the questioning of the officials, was just a sideshow. The hour-long video criticising decisions was something I had never seen before.

Why did it happen? Because his team lost. It’s done to deflect attention and to take pressure off your own players and put that pressure elsewhere.

But a lot of what wasn’t a great advertisement happened on the field. It was not enjoyable to watch. If you were put on this planet having never seen rugby before and watched this series, you would not be rushing out to play the game. Our game deserves more. It doesn’t mean you want to see 50 tries over the series but we should at least hope for seeing the ball in play, players breaking the lines, putting good defences under pressure. Cheslin Kolbe hardly saw the ball. When he did, he scored.

You have to ask: what is the point of having world-class players and not trying to use them.

When there is so much at stake, as there always is during a Lions series, you rarely see free-flowing rugby. Teams are more afraid of making mistakes than wanting to go out there and express themselves.

That’s also one of the reasons we saw some of the decisions take far too long to make. The TMO review for Kolbe’s try should have taken no more than a couple of replays. There was no footage that showed clear evidence of a knock-on needed to overturn the on-field decision. It all comes down to the fact it’s a Lions series and this was the decider.

It was such a huge decision, they wanted to make sure they got it right. However, the more you look at it, the more TMO Marius Jonker asked referee Mathieu Raynal if he was sure, the more doubts creep in, the more confusion grows. You wonder if you’ve missed something.

I guarantee that many of the decisions we have seen over the last three Tests would have been made an awful lot quicker if it was a normal game. I think the team of officials dealt with everything very well over the series, especially as the pressure grew as the games went on. I thought Mathieu was calm and clear in his decisions and communication in the decider.

He got the decision for Finn Russell’s high tackle spot-on. It wasn’t an aggressive impact. Kolbe was slipping so there was a sudden drop in height. Russell was bent over to make a legitimate tackle but could have been lower. It was a penalty but not a card.

There has been some talk that South Africa should not have had the chance to kick their winning penalty because the scrum-half took it quickly from the wrong place. But there is nothing unusual in the referee just bringing it back to the mark and making the team take it again. People might argue if Cobus Reinach tapped and ran then he’s had his chance at it but what Mathieu did was correct in law. Unless he knocks it on or he taps it incorrectly, the referee will always just bring it back.

When you look at the series, South Africa deserved to win. They have hardly played since the World Cup final in 2019 but, as the best sides do, they grew into the series and ironed out any errors they may have made in the first. They dominated ever since.

It wasn’t pretty. They wanted to slow the ball down, they wanted to stop the Lions playing quick rugby and did just that. South Africa never allowed them to get a tempo going and that suited them.

They just executed their game plan better than the Lions did. You can’t say they didn’t deserve it.