What a tour it was. Those who spent a lot of time criticising Warren Gatland will be retreating with their tails firmly between their legs.
There are a bunch of interesting performances which we could look at; Jonathan Davies’ re-emergence as a world class centre, Maro Itoje’s confirmation that we will be watching him for years to come, or the end of the pervasive but incorrect myth that you need to score 30 plus points to compete with the All Blacks.
Instead, we’ll look at something which very nearly lost the series for the Lions. From the very first All Black kick off, Beauden Barrett got out the lob wedge and landed the kick just beyond the 10 metre line and caused the visitors untold difficulties. Had Romain Poite kept with his original call on the final kick off, then the Lions would be 3 points down and the series would’ve slipped their clutches. All that because they weren’t able to adapt to the hosts’ game plan for restarts.
This is how the Lions line up for the opening kick off, the blue names are the lifters and the red are the people who are getting lifted. This has been a development recently in rugby, you no longer need two players to lift someone and this opens up many more options for placing your team across the pitch. Because Talupe Faletau or Sean O’Brien are unlikely to be lifted by one another, they drop Faletau out of the way and move Liam Williams into a lifting position. After Faletau’s successes last week, he doesn’t get a single chance to return a kick this week.
What ends up happening is that Jamie George reads the kick early and gets into a good position, but he doesn’t then react to the fact that the ball is heading towards Itoje. The English second row is perfectly positioned for the catch but nobody is there to lift him and he loses out to Jodie Barrett – the 1.96m athletic full-back. Advantage New Zealand.
The second kick off works much better for the Lions. They benefit from the fact that Beauden Barrett aims at Williams, who is much quicker to get into the air. Another advantage is that Kieran Read is the first person to get up for the Kiwis, he doesn’t have much hope of getting the ball and instead blocks Jordie Barrett from claiming the kick back. It’s deuce at the moment, but after this failing, the All Blacks don’t directly kick towards Williams again.
The very next kick is too short from fly-half Barrett and Davies takes it before the 10 metre line. Read pulls Williams to the ground without the ball and this sets up the spectacular long range penalty which Elliot Daly knocks over with ease. At the moment, it’s looking like the Lions benefited more than anyone from these kick offs.
Almost immediately however, the All Blacks struck back. With the number of short kicks, Davies was creeping further and further towards the 10 metre line. That’s exactly the spot that Beauden Barrett put the next kick, Sam Warburton gets to the spot of the ball but George isn’t quick enough to follow him and Warburton ends up trying to catch the ball alone. He doesn’t have much of a shot against Jordie Barrett and the full-back snatches the ball once again. The Lions formation is perfect, but when the ball is placed slightly away from them, they struggle to adapt and get someone into the air and the onrushing Kiwis have the advantage.
It’s no surprise, given these limitations, that the next kick off tried to move the catchers around. It was slightly overstruck and fell in the seam between the short catchers and the backs, and Faletau, stood in the 22. Anthony Watson advances on it and makes the catch just before Jordie Barrett is able to bag yet another stolen ball. Unbelievably, the kick is in the air for four seconds before it lands with Watson, that is just a perfect kick which will consistently put pressure on the receiving team. A player with the speed of Jordie Barrett will easily be able to compete for that ball as it falls to earth.
That brings us to the final kick of the game, and the final kick off of the series. Beauden Barrett has kicked all over the pitch for the restarts and he uses that unpredictability to great advantage in this final kick. He puts the kick precisely where Warburton, Williams and Davies all have a chance to claim it. That means that nobody fully claims it and Williams has to try and make the catch from a standing start. The bizarre thing from New Zealand is that they don’t send Jordie Barrett chasing this kick, they send their captain Read instead, who is slightly shorter than his full-back. He doesn’t get any higher and clatters into Williams. Once again, when the ball isn’t landed directly on a jumper the Lions struggle to put someone, even the relatively slight Williams, into the air.
Under other circumstances that could have been a penalty, it wasn’t given and instead the Lions offside was ruled accidental rather than deliberate and the ensuing attacked was absorbed. However, the below screenshot suggests that Ken Owens wasn’t offside anyway. I’ve taken two screenshots of the same angle, the main photo shows where Owens was when he made contact and the second Owens is where he is when he catches the ball, not offside deliberately or not because the ball doesn’t go forwards.
Conclusion
Penalty, free kick or blown call, it doesn’t really matter, the All Blacks didn’t change their kick off strategy throughout the game, yet the Lions failed to adapt. Beauden Barrett may not have impressed kicking at the posts, but in this game, his kick offs were near perfect. He hung the ball up there forever and let his brother go and fetch it. Where the home side fell down was probably the final kick, yes it may have been the only kick off most people paid attention to all year, but if it was Jordie Barrett going high to retrieve the kick, rather than the less mobile Read, the Kiwi chances of a win would’ve increased significantly.
One thing is clear, more and more teams are trying short kicks and they’re getting better at them. If you can hang the kick up for a few of seconds and then go and claim it, you get turnover ball and better attacking situations. The Lions’ receiving formation looked good, but it never quite worked. Expect to see kicking coaches losing sleep as they work out how the gain the upper hand in this important part of the game next season.
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