Maori defeat ideal spur to get the Lions roaring

IF Paul O’Connell and his fellow Lions emerge victorious from the first Test against the All Blacks at Jade Stadium tomorrow, the Ireland lock will be grateful to the wake-up call received a fortnight earlier from the New Zealand Maori.

O’Connell & Co were found seriously wanting at the Waikato Stadium on June 11 when the Maori delivered the only defeat for the Lions on the tour to date in the so-called unofficial fourth Test. Lions players, including O’Connell, admitted they had lacked sufficient aggression in that game and had come up short at both the breakdown and the lineout as the Maori won 19-13.

“It was probably a game we all needed,” O’Connell said. “We were working on our line-outs, our scrums and our organisation but we probably forgot the most important thing in rugby which is to get stuck in, be aggressive and put numbers to rucks.

“For all the fancy players we have, if you forget to do your hard work first, you’ll come unstuck and that’s what happened to us. While it was disappointing to lose I think it was probably something that needed to happen.

“You’d like to think we didn’t need it but I suppose with so many good players we want to play a certain way and throw the ball around a bit and do all these things but you’ve got to get your basics right - the scrum, the lineout and the breakdown, they’re the three big things and we struggled at the lineout and the breakdown that night.

“So it was a watershed for us, that game. Everyone hates losing but it was something we needed and it would have been worse if that had happened in the first Test and we were trying to rebuild with one week to go until the next Test. This way it’s set us up well for the first Test.”

First Test TV coverage Sky Sports 1, tomorrow, 7.35am.