A tacit admission of mistakes

BY MAKING five changes to the starting lineup for tomorrow’s second test, the Lionsmanagement have put their hands up andaccepted they got it wrong last weekend. Nowhere is this more striking than in the make-up of the front five who were pummelled in Durban.

The plummeting fortunes of Phil Vickery and Lee Mears are illustrated by neither’s ability to even make the bench after being deemed good enough to start last Saturday. While Adam Jones and Matthew Rees were virtual certainties to start after the positive impact they made off the bench, the promotion of Andrew Sheridan and Ross Ford is a tacit admission that in South Africa, size is everything. It also confirms what we suspected all along in: most of the early provincial games only camouflaged weaknesses in the Lions tight five.

Mears, a committed and industrious forward, earned his place in the opening test side primarily because of his accuracy come lineout time was so much better than either Rees or Ford. What are the odds now that by shoring up the problems at the scrum, the Lions lineout will suffer? Simon Shaw’s inclusion for a first test start of his career 12 years after he was seen as a shoo-in to partner Martin Johnson in 1997 is very much a case of “big man wanted”. After impressing when introduced at the ABSA stadium, Donncha O’Callaghan has a right to feel aggrieved on losing out altogether on the matchday squad.