Loose Pass
This week we will be mostly concerning ourselves with likely Lions tactics…
Welcome to Loose Pass – our weekly assortment of musings, mutterings, tickled fancies and disjointed thoughts. This week we will be mostly concerning ourselves with likely Lions tactics…
Is Loose Pass alone in feeling a little underwhelmed by the announcement of the British & Irish Lions touring party?
Perhaps it was the fun of playing God – well, Geech – in the local pub for hours upon end in recent months. How we bored all and sundry with our various selections of tourists, detailing how and why they would cut a swathe through South Africa.
In our mind's eye we saw the world champions on their knees and pretty South African girls hanging off our every word in the moment of total victory, desperate to find out what possibly possessed us to pick the likes of Tom Croft, Mike Blair, Thom Evans and Danny Cipriani. How could you have possibly have known that they would link up so perfectly? What brilliance! What bravery! What foresight! What a man!
The dulcet tones of Gerald Davies shook us from the our drunken revelry, with the flow of names that trickled off his silver tongue morphing into an icy shower over our heads.
Of course. How could we have been so stupid? McGeechan and his cohorts aren't playing fantasy rugby. They had a good, long think and will now have a considered bash at the Boks.
'Bash' being the operative word.
This is a squad designed to shift pianos rather than run rings. It's all muscles and precious few magicians.
Yes, there are a few exciting choices among the backs, but too few to mention. The whole thing reeks of 10-man rugby, as the choice of captaincy attests. Given the choice between sending it wide or keeping it tight, Paul O'Connell will not hesitate to do to the red jersey of the Lions what he has long done to the red jersey of Munster: stuff a ball up it.
Fair enough. What other chance does a scratch side of virtual strangers have against the world champions in their own backyard?
The Lions won't win the series by playing adventurous rugby, but those giant forwards might just eke out enough territory and possession to snatch an unlikely series win.
No, it won't be pretty, but nor was the series win of 1997, and that remains the most beautiful thing in the lives of most Lions fans.
But don't start dusting down the red bunting just yet. There's an obvious flaw to the plan: there doesn't seem to be a 'Plan B'.
With a couple of possible exceptions, the forwards look positively agoraphobic – they are build for comfort rather than for speed.
Sure, the likes of Alan Quinlan and Joe Worsley are 'tree-cutters' of the highest order, but they've been in the logging business so long that they have laid down roots.
Fail to win enough ball and keep hold of it and the athleticism of the Boks will rip the tourists into weedy strips of biltong.
Suddenly the forecast for June and July looks decidedly chilly.
———————————————————————————————————–
That said, the Lions might yet get a helping hand from an unlikely source – the much-maligned ELVs.
The tour will be played under the law variations that have been in operation in Europe rather than 'sanctions' version that is currently in play in the Super 14. (No, please don't ask us to explain!)
With South Africans now programmed to expect free-kicks for a number of 'old money' penalty offences, the Lions should get a fair few pops at goal – which could account for the position-first feel of the selected squad.
But if that's the case, where's the Lions' banker? Or, to give his full name, Chris Paterson.
Stephen Jones and Ronan O'Gara have scored more than 1,600 points between them in international rugby, but neither was at his most accurate in the Six Nations. Just cast your mind back to the very last minute of the tournament.
As the only two fly-halves on tour, are they really expected to play five full games apiece and be the Lions' main source of income?
Just two fly-halves? Something seems a little amiss here. A Lions tour is no place for a makeshift pivot, and the idea of Riki Flutey moonlighting as a pivot seems like a non-starter – he'll surely be braaied alive.
It almost seems like the door been left open for another kicking fly-half. And, as we all know, there is another [insert Yoda voice here] and he has something of a reputation for tagging along after missing initial cuts…
———————————————————————————————————–
Plenty of commentators have put down O'Connell's selection as Lions captain to his height and have backed up their claim with a quote from McGeechan's account from the tour of 1997.
“What I really loved,” wrote Geech on Martin Johnson, “was the idea that when the South African captain came to toss up, he had to look up at the Lions captain.”
Well if that's true, Brian O'Driscoll has a case for unfair dismissal, and former South Africa captain Gary Teichmann might feel compelled to back up against a door frame and ask his mum to score a pencil across the top of his head.
Yet empirical evidence seems to suggest that coaches do indeed tend to prefer big men to captain their sides. Or, judging from the roll of honour below, perhaps it's just that big men tend to make better captains.
Either way, Loose Pass is happy to make representation for those vertically challenged would-be leaders out there. Let's take this to the courts!
2009: 6N – Ireland (centre)
2008: 6N – Wales (loose forward); 3N – New Zealand (loose forward)
2007: RWC – South Africa (hooker); 6N – France (hooker); 3N – New Zealand (loose forward)
2006: 6N – France (lock); 3N – New Zealand (loose forward)
2005: 6N – Wales (fullback/loose forward); 3N – New Zealand (centre)
2004: 6N – France (lock); 3N – South Africa (hooker)
2003: RWC – England (lock); 6N – England (lock); 3N – New Zealand (loose forward)
2002: 6N – France (scrum-half); 3N – New Zealand (loose forward)
2001: 6N – England (lock); 3N – Australia (lock)
2000: 6N – England (scrum-half); 3N – Australia (lock)
1999: RWC – Australia (lock); 5N – Scotland (scrum-half); 3N – New Zealand (loose forward)
1998: 5N – France (hooker); 3N – South Africa (loose forward)
1997: 5N -France (loose forward); 3N – New Zealand (hooker)
1996: 5N – England (centre); 3N – New Zealand (hooker)
1995: RWC – South Africa (loose forward); 5N – England (centre)
———————————————————————————————————–
Unwilling to relinquish our trusty clipboard just yet, Loose Pass had a stab at picking a side from the discarded British and Irish masses, and this is what we came up with:
Unlucky XV: 15 Delon Armitage, 14