This week we will be mostly concerning ourselves with ‘Warrenball’, preparation time, jet-lag and other excuses.
Land of the long dark cloud
Birthdays aren’t what they used to be. You spend weeks beside yourself with excitement as you ponder what wonder the missus will lay on. Invariably it turns out to be a multi-pack of socks, lunch with the in-laws and dinner with her friends. You learn all this whilst still in your pyjamas and duly spend the rest of your big day trying to wish it away.
The Lions tour of New Zealand is beginning to feel a lot like a birthday, and not just because we aged a full year over the course of their first game.
We were expecting a Ferrari, a dirty weekend away – some new golf balls, at least. We got socks and are now resigned to merely enduring the rest of it.
Yeah, yeah. We know. We shouldn’t read too much into Saturday’s opener in Whangarei. The fellas were jet-lagged. They hadn’t had much prep time. We should accentuate the positives: a win’s a win and it came at no cost in terms of personnel.
But we’re not prepared to drink the Kool-Aid. The game actually offered plenty of reading – and none of it was rosy.
Firstly, jet-lag. Come off it! They flat-bedded it all the way in business class, resting their precious noggins on the same sort of embroidered head-rests that precipitated Sir Clive Woodward’s downfall in 2005.
The pride of 2017 had four days to rest and recoup before their first appointment. The pilots who flew them out there would have been deemed fit to undertake the return trip after just 48 hours of downtime, so is it really too much to ask a bunch of professional sportsmen to rouse themselves for a game of rugby after three full nights of sleep?
More to the point, one shouldn’t really play the jet-lag card whilst south of the equator. Super Rugby takes place – week in, week out – over 12 time zones. If anyone is entitled to milky-nonnies, it’s those at the top end of New Zealand rugby.
As for lack of prep time, it’s a fair shout. Loose Pass has been bleating on about this sort of thing for longer than we care to remember. But it is what it is. Complaining about it now, as Warren Gatland has been doing, smacks of getting your excuses in early.
That’s not a good look in this hardest of countries. Be precious at your own peril. Whinges of this sort are best saved for the end-of-tour review.
To top that off, Gatland also launched a rather petulant defence of ‘Warrenball’, choosing to get a decade of angst off his chest during the first week of tour.
This is worrying in the extreme. Unless it’s a wily, stage-managed, wagon-circling attempt to engender some sort of siege mentality among his troops, it’s pretty clear that the pressure has already got to Gats.
Worse still, his stinging defence of his trademark philosophy suggests that’s exactly what we will get over the course of the next five weeks: big ‘D’, big carries and precious little else.
But would that be so bad?
What stunned the Lions in Whangarei wasn’t jet-lag or lack of prep, it was the innate footballing ability of the Provincial Barbarians – part-timers, all!
Yes, it would be lovely if the Lions could match this ‘positive rugby’ and fight fire with fire. In reality, the tourists do not possess the requisite skills. And when it comes to quelling flames, forget fire: water is the undisputed champ.
For all their majesty in attack, it’s been a while since New Zealand’s finest came up against a well-oiled defensive system. The paucity of gain-line tackling in Super Rugby has allowed New Zealand forwards to become accustomed to the sort of metreage eked out by European wingers. They’ve forgotten how it feels to be rocked backwards.
The Lions best chance of a series win in New Zealand rests on reacquainting their hosts with that feeling. They need to recalibrate their opponents’ instruments through sheer claustrophobia-enducing force. With metres reduced to feet and mere inches, cracks will appear and up will step the Lions’ array of dead-eyed goal-kickers.
‘Parking the bus’ is never pretty, and chances are the tourists will still come up well short. But in the absence of any plausible alternative, the only way is Warrenball.
Lions fans will simply have to learn to love it.
Loose Pass compiled by former Planet Rugby editor Andy Jackson
The post Loose Pass appeared first on Planet Rugby.