HARD HITTING VIEW

With Lions warm-up matches before tours, and leading into the tests there are always a couple of objectives for coaches.

First, they want to see how new combinations work out and evolve and, secondly, they don’t want any injuries to their key players.

Yesterday at Murrayfield, Warren Gatland would have been reasonably pleased with objective one, but tearing out his hair on objective two.

His captain, the totemic Alun Wyn Jones, was the most-significant casualty, leaving the field clutching his wrist, but with a shoulder injury.

The skipper was joined on the sidelines by Justin Tipuric, who had been called up because Hamish Watson had been concussed in training – it was not an auspicious start and Gatland will be counting the cost of losing his captain.

But, as far as testing out combinations went, Gatland will be happy.

His centres clicked well together – hardly surprising since they combine for Ireland – and the back three and back row also looked in good fettle, even if the back row became a little “one-paced” when Tipuric left the field.

Dan Biggar, voted Man of the Match, had an assured game. He will face stiff competition from both Owen Farrell and Finn Russell, and much will depend on how Gatland wants to play in South Africa.

It was hard to get a sense of that from yesterday’s match.

Japan are a very different prospect to the Springboks and they were great value to watch, bringing pace and ingenuity to their game.

In fact, the Japanese won the second half by 10-7, but the fact that they had conceded three converted tries in the first half, some of them quite soft, meant that victory was out of reach.

It was a good workout for the Lions and highlighted some areas to work on when the plane lands in South Africa.

The Springboks will have been scrutinising this match and may have some ideas as to where the Lions may be vulnerable – but the Lions test team is unlikely to resemble the team that played yesterday.

It promises to be an enthralling series.

Finally, there was real angst from fans who had paid handsomely to be among the 16,500 crowd.

They were forced to queue before entering the ground and to wait an extraordinarily long time before being served at a bar, which was closed at half-time.

One of the screens in Murrayfield didn’t work and there was no power or wi-fi in the press box leading up to the game.

It was as if the game was a surprise to the SRU, who clearly did not cover themselves in glory as hosts.

Thankfully, the rugby made up for it.

‘ Gatland will be counting the cost of losing his captain