Five headaches for Lions boss Warren Gatland

Colin Newboult

Planet Rugby features writer James While delves into all the big issues for Lions head coach Warren Gatland following the weekend’s events.

The king is dead

Urban myth suggests that Roger Waters wasn’t even the best bass player in Pink Floyd, but his vision and leadership of the world’s greatest rock band was absolutely peerless. Sure, guitarist David Gilmour was a far better musician and technician (and even played bass on all the studio parts!) but as a leader and visionary, Waters held Pink Floyd’s creative success together and drove them forward with sheer charisma and willpower as a band bigger than the sum of their parts.

The 2021 British and Irish Lions find themselves in a similar position. We will never know if Alun Wyn Jones would have or would not have started in the Tests and yes, there were question marks over his ageing legs and mobility but, as a leader, make no doubt about it, he was the glue that was bonding this tour party together and the emotional orchestrator that plucked at the team’s heartstrings.

Reference points in rugby are priceless. Want to know what it’s like to face the Boks at altitude? Ask Al. Want to know how powerful that first scrum will be? AWJ’ll tell you. Wondering where the best places in Cape Town to go socially distanced sight-seeing? The skip is the man to ask, and the loss of that experience is a crippling blow.

Alun Wyn was an icon for this team; a father figure to the youngsters and a vital strategic cog for the elders, as evidenced by Rory Sutherland’s and Dan Biggar’s emotional words in the press conference yesterday. Biggar was visibly choking up when asked about Jones’ impact on the team in two short weeks, while gentle giant Sutherland palpably shook at the loss of the man he described as ‘already taking me under his wing.’

For the Lions, this is more than an injury, it’s the end of an era of excellence from the big Osprey and the start of a new beginning for the lads he led. The only way they can ever repay him is with five simple words – ‘Let’s do it for Al’. You can be sure those words will ring out around their group and their focus will gain an even sharper edge for the loss of their great mate and mentor.

Long live the king

Warren Gatland was quick to end speculation in the press and swiftly announced a new skipper; not Owen Farrell, Ken Owens or Stuart Hogg, as many would have predicted, not even the brilliantly in-form Biggar, who was a giant at Murrayfield yesterday. Nope, the chosen man is Munster scrum-half Conor Murray, a three-time Lion and Test certainty, but someone who’s never captained for any sustained period at first-class level.

But wait, there’s method in Gatland’s apparent madness here. Owens is far from sure of a Test starting berth, and in any case, his personality lends itself more so to the role of sergeant major in the trenches rather than the general in the battlefield, so making him skipper robs the Lions of a crucial secondary leader on pitch.

Hogg has suffered some horrendous luck and cruelly, has flattered to deceive as a Lion and his focus must be on completing a tour in one piece and transporting his role as a brilliant free runner into the Test side. Farrell’s appointment would have taken so many headlines both in South Africa and the Celtic Nations that the pressure on him would have been enormous, coupled with the fact that he’s only a probability rather than a certainty to start the right now. He, like Owens, is better off (to continue our Floyd theme) with a ‘walk on part in the war rather than a lead role in a cage’ (sic).

Which leaves us with Murray. The three qualities that go in his favour is his popularity in the squad, his sheer doggedness in terms of scraping wins from a crucial position on the pitch and the fact that he, like Jones, has something near a century of caps, winning Tests against every one of the big three nations. It might not be the most obvious choice but, when you unpack the logic behind Gatland’s thinking, it makes a great deal of rugby sense.

Breakdown and balance

It seems churlish to analyse in detail the teamwork at the breakdown in the opening match of a nine-game series, with the side only 10 days together as a unit. However, there were some serious issues emerging yesterday in physicality that won’t have gone unnoticed by Steve Tandy and Robin McBryde, particularly that of ruck dominance and defensive dominance. As noted on Planet Rugby yesterday, operating a wide 13-1-1 defence relies upon real speed from the blitz leader to drag the defence up into the faces of the opposition. If nobody performs this role then the first line of defence will absorb the runs of their opponents, but in doing so will deform and cede a crucial two or three metres at every impact.

With one of the natural leaders of that ‘push’ being the openside flanker, the loss of Justin Tipuric robbed the Lions of that early rush, combined also with a midfield combination that worked well in attack but were less than joined up in defence, as evidenced by Kotaro Matsushima’s freedom in the second half. Biggar commented to Planet Rugby that they were well aware of the issues that the rockstar Japanese winger had caused, but part of fixing them was identifying the issues and he felt sure that another week or so would see a dramatic improvement.

However, at the breakdown, there were further issues, with nobody taking on the role of clear-out enforcer (again, compounded by Tipuric’s early departure) and it’s no coincidence that the first man called up as a replacement is the best gainline enforcer in Britain, the immensely physical Josh Navidi, a man who was very unlucky not to be selected in the first place.

Set-piece

Jones’ departure caused a further leadership headache for the Lions in the lineout – he was the man calling the shots and the plays and when he departed, Iain Henderson was thrown into a role he wasn’t prepared for (although he did an admirable job). Calling a modern lineout is not about where the ball is being thrown to – it’s much more than that – it’s about calling the support movement across the ground in the lift and, thereafter, to maximise the impact of the driving maul or any peel moves.

It’ll be worrying for the Lions that Japan coped admirably well with all of the Lions attempted catch and drives, and there’s a need to make sure there’s a balance between catchers (five of them on the pitch after injuries) and the supporting drivers.

At scrum time, Courtney Lawes spent 65 minutes playing in a position that he hasn’t played in since November 2019. Since then, he’s lost six kilos in an attempt to specialise as a blindside flank and it was apparent that the Lions scrum didn’t have much destructive impact despite great shifts in the loose from Rory Sutherland, Tadhg Furlong and Kyle Sinckler. When Wyn Jones came on (given he had a lightweight Lawes behind him) he struggled to compete with the compactness and lowness of the Japanese eight, crumpling on three occasions and conceding two penalties on a day that exposed his scrummaging power.

Nevertheless, these are all teething issues and all very fixable and the fact that the issues are so easily identifiable means that in theory they should be easy to get right.

The crucial players

With an injury failure rate of 10% in this game, the 2021 British and Irish Lions cannot afford to lose any more key cogs in their Test plans. Yesterday saw some changes in hierarchy; Jack Conan probably leapfrogged Taulupe Faletau in terms of Test eight options, while Tadhg Beirne was outstanding in running play. Bundee Aki also put in a great shift, while Josh Adams now must be favourite to start on the right wing over Anthony Watson.

But the spine of the team – Biggar, Murray, Sutherland, Furlong and Robbie Henshaw – have no real like-for-like seasoned Test replacements that can do a starting job in the way they can. If one of those players breaks before the first Test, the Lions injury crisis will go from ‘serious’ to ‘desperate’ and, above all, Gatland and his assistants must work out how to keep the key players sharp and fit without exposing them to further injury. It’s an age old problem in rugby, but one compounded yesterday with the desperate losses of two key Lions.

By James While