The stakes are intensifying on all fronts with the first Test now just a fortnight away. The British & Irish Lions are still trying to construct the fundamental forward pillars underpinning their game while some key Wallaby figures are nursing injuries and are missing from their side’s warm-up game against Fiji. These are the moments when, behind the scenes, elite coaches really earn their money.
Despite two comfortable victories on Australian soil so far, Andy Farrell will certainly be wanting his side to shift everything up a gear, both for the sake of the collective and their own individual ambitions. For one or two this is in effect a final trial for places in the Test matchday 23, particularly so in certain fiercely contested positions.
A penny for the thoughts of Fin and Marcus Smith, for example, after the high-profile call-up of Owen Farrell to replace the injured Elliot Daly. Professional sport is a relentless dog-eat-dog world and there is a sense that Farrell Sr is seeking a bit more snarl and bite from his Lions, young and old, than he has seen to date.
It certainly feels like one of the primary reasons he has opted to summon his son, whose competitive edge is never in doubt. And if Owen’s arrival does happen to coincide with the Lions’ most purposeful performance to date, will that be entirely coincidental? Andy Farrell is a proven winner and, as was the case with Warren Gatland’s decision to drop Brian O’Driscoll before the decisive final Test here in 2013, he has not travelled to Australia to enter a popularity contest.
Ultimately his players all respect and understand that reality, not least those who have previously taken the field with Farrell Jr. “You don’t lose class,” stressed his England colleague Luke Cowan-Dickie, brushing aside any external doubts about the 33-year-old’s recent fitness and form issues. “Faz is a class player, so I’m well happy. He’s one of those players who will definitely add to the group.”
Another squad member keen to renew old acquaintances is this weekend’s captain, Tadhg Beirne, who toured with Farrell in South Africa four years ago. “I’ll be really excited to see him,” insisted Beirne, after his team’s gentle eve-of- game session at the picturesque North Sydney Oval. “Playing with him four years ago I’ve seen all those leadership qualities that he brings. Any type of leadership is only going to enhance the squad.”
Clearly they would say that – and this has not yet been a tour notable for its relaxed communications approach – but, equally, the most successful Lions tours are built on blunt honesty and a prevailing over-my-dead-body attitude. Chugging along against moderate opposition simply hoping for the best is not a recipe for guaranteed Test fulfilment.
Hence why Farrell has been reluctant to shower his players with post-match platitudes, even though the Lions have so far scored 16 tries and 106 points in their two fixtures in Australia and have yet to concede a second-half point. To his mind the Lions’ defence has to be tighter in the first quarter of games, in particular. “We want to keep improving our defence because that’s the main thing you’d want to stand for. I know our defence has been pretty good but there’s still room for improvement.”
Then there is the ever-crucial battle of the breakdown where Australia will definitely look to come hard in the Test series. If the Lions aspire to the high-tempo game that will give their talented backs the best chance of running free, their coaches have been re-emphasising the need to go harder around the contact area. “As a forward pack the main thing for us is just the ruck,” revealed James Ryan, Beirne’s fellow Ireland international. “The Waratahs put a huge amount of pressure on the ruck, they’ve the most amount of turnovers in Super Rugby. It’s just about getting that bit right and challenging them when we have the ball.”
Hoping to stand firm, among others, will be the English-born flanker Jamie Adamson, formerly of Durham University and England sevens, who came out to Australia to play a season of local club rugby and, to his credit, now finds himself on the bench against the Lions. There will also be a familiar face in the home coaching box where Mike Catt, a Lion in 1997 and 2001, is now the attack coach.
In the corresponding tour game on that 2001 expedition the Waratahs opted to “go the biff”, with Ronan O’Gara being infamously punched up to 11 times on the floor by the Waratahs’ Duncan McRae and Tom Bowman receiving a yellow card – there were five in the game – for catching Danny Grewcock with an elbow within three seconds of the kick- off. The then Lions coach Graham Henry called it “a black night for rugby” but Catt insists these are different times. “Those days are gone,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s too fast. You can’t get away with it. Which Lions star are you going to rough up anyway? They have so many good players so they don’t really rely on one person, do they?”
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It will still be a physical collision up front, though, particularly with the 148kg (23st 4lb) Taniela Tupou involved. Tupou needs a big game – he rarely has a small one, to be fair – to restore the faith of the Wallaby selectors, already minus the massive Will Skelton and Rob Valetini against Fiji on Sunday.
NSW Waratahs v British & Irish Lions teams
Show
Sydney Football Stadium, Saturday 5 July, 8pm AEST/11am BST
NSW Waratahs: Creighton; Kellaway, Foketi, Walton, Lancaster; Bowen, Wilson; Lambert, Dobbins, Tupou, Lee-Warner, Amatosero, Leota, Gamble, Sinclair (capt).
Replacements: Vailanu, Barrett, Botha, Philip, Adamson, Grant, Edmed, O’Donnell.
British & Irish Lions: Keenan; Hansen, Jones, Tuipulotu, Kinghorn, F Smith, Mitchell; Schoeman, Cowan-Dickie, Bealham, Beirne (capt), Ryan, Pollock, Van der Flier, Earl.
Replacements: Sheehan, Genge, Furlong, McCarthy, Cummings. Morgan, White, M Smith.
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The Lions front row, though, are united in their motivation to make their own sizeable impact, their props having even formed a clandestine tea-drinking society from which every other position is excluded. “We are like bison migrating together … we have a secret meeting every night,” revealed the ever-entertaining Pierre Schoeman, the Scotland loose-head who has rapidly forged a bond with England’s Ellis Genge.
“I think loose-heads all around the world are very similar. They are quite weird people. Something isn’t right. We always say that playing rugby you must have a screw loose but playing rugby as a loose-head prop … I won’t even go into the tight-head props. We’re different but similar. We are almost like a gladiator when all the gladiators come together.”
Which just leaves the squad’s scrum coach John Fogarty – “he has the key for the cage to unlock the gladiators, that’s probably the best way to describe him” – with the job of harnessing all this latent horsepower and encouraging the Lions to unleash hell. Lay down a properly physical marker now and the pressure on Australia will further increase.