Loose Pass: Reflecting on a tiresome Lions tour
This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the future of the Lions and a short look ahead to the Rugby Championship…
Quo vadis Lions?
And so there it went, the Lions tour of 2021. Not one that will live long in the memory for a vast variety of reasons, the lack of entertainment on the pitch prominent on the list.
The ball in play time in the third Test was a shade over 26 minutes. In 80 minutes of rugby. That is very poor – it was up in the high 30s for most other tournaments at least. You can harp on about the need for World Rugby to do something about this, but the ball is not totally in their court on this one. If a player is ‘injured’, as huge numbers of green-shirted players have briefly been in this series, referees in the current climate don’t have a choice. The interruptions were too frequent across all three Tests to be coincidence. Jose Mourinho probably loved it. Nobody else did.
There are some aspects, such as only allowing one scrum reset to eat up the clock (i.e. only the original scrum is executed with the clock running, none of the resets). The ‘use it’ call is only very sporadically enforced these days. 90 seconds for a goal-kick is clearly too much. And there are clearly too many people able to come on to the pitch during any kind of break. However, while the general attitude is not to try and stretch matches out too long in general, none of these are easily solved.
But ultimately, the blame for the poor entertainment can only be laid at the feet of the coaches, both of whom entered the stakes with ultra-conservative game-plans, both with the target, seemingly, of not losing rather than winning. Lions fans can justifiably go on about the enraging South African gamesmanship but they should not forget that they notched two tries in three Tests, both from driving mauls, nor that Dan Biggar passed the ball three times in the second Test.
A shame; it was instructive to glimpse what a Lions team marshalled by Finn Russell might have been able to achieve. Going on the basis of the first two Tests, you also have to wonder how much of what Russell did was actually down to instruction and how much to his own supernatural playing instincts.
Yet quality aside, the third Test was at least compelling. By and large because at the rugby was clean both of foul play controversy and the off-pitch blah-blah-blah before it. A quieter week in the media led to a better focus on the game and its nuances rather than hoping it would compensate for the misery of having to listen to Rassie Erasmus and his multiple personalities moan about the officials. Simply for that, it was more enjoyable.
The most important questions now focus on the Lions and its future. A wild mix of factors conspired to make this tour almost an anti-Lions, most of them out of the control of the players or staff – for whom there are still eight days in quarantine to run.
But the pre-tour shenanigans regarding player release had the odour of a problem that can only be temporarily neutralised rather than fixed. The one-sided nature of the tour matches, with none of the hosts’ bloated international squad featuring, is another problem. Moneymen demand more games, welfare officers demand fewer. The Lions, an addition to a full calendar rather than occupying its own space, is caught between those two demands.
To that end, it was welcome to hear that for the next tour – and assuming there is time – Pacific Island teams could feature as tour opposition rather than weakened state teams (although that could simply be noise used as a bargaining chip to ensure the Super Rugby teams are kept strong). It was also welcome to hear that there may be a parallel Lionesses tour, which would certainly throw a marker down for the sport in all sorts of ways.
The emotions visible among the tourists ensured that all watching were in no doubt that the Lions remains a pinnacle-of-career concept to all players. We can only hope that the moneymen see it similarly, allowing uninterrupted tour and preparation, and that the tour is clean both of the on-pitch time-wasting and off-pitch negativity next time.
The next few weeks
Attention will stay in the southern hemisphere for the next four weeks as the Rugby Championship kicks into gear.
The questions we would most like to see answered:
New Zealand: Any chinks in the armour or drop-off caused by the pandemic isolation
Australia: Can they tighten up as well as improve with the ball in hand?
South Africa: Will the gamesmanship and negativity continue whenever under pressure or will a more cohesive team tun them ragged?
Argentina: Can they build on the impressive tournament last year?
Loose Pass compiled by Lawrence Nolan
Biggar's first half injury provides Russell chance to excel
Mark Smith and Adam Kyriacou from the Planet Rugby Show discuss the impressive performance of Finn Russell after an early injury to Dan Biggar gave the fly-half the chance to play a starring role in the British and Irish Lions' defeat to South Africa this weekend.