Rowntree bemoans ‘immense’ loss of Flannery

FORMER English and Lions prop Graham Rowntree yesterday spoke of the ‘immense’ loss of injured Irish hooker Jerry Flannery to the Lions tour of South Africa.

“Jerry was a stand-out candidate for the Lions over a long period; he’s a great player and, yes, it was a huge blow, but still I’m more than happy with the performance of the guys here now.

“Lee Mears, Matthew Rees and Ross Ford have stepped up to the mark; I am happy with each of the three players; they haven’t held back but that’s nothing less than expected because they’re all quality people. At the end of the day, it’s not a great concern.”

Rowntree promised he would be a hard task-master, but not as hard as former Lions forwards coach Jim Telfer, who was in charge when the Leicester and English prop toured South Africa in 1997.

He explained: “I’m not worried about the scrum, but I haven’t been delighted either. There are still areas where we must look at; on Saturday, we allowed Western Province to walk our tight head around so to speak. We didn’t deal with that very well and it could be a big problem for us against South Africa.

“I’ll be as hard as I need to be on the players, but I still wake up in sweats thinking about some of the sessions in advance of the first Test game against South Africa in 1997, and Jim Telfer’s training programme.

“It will get pretty intense over the next few days for sure; we’ve got to have an added intensity in training to prepare for a Test game, but I think it will be measured. We work the guys hard, but work them hard over a very short period. The key about all set-piece play is to revisit it often and work a bit here and there; our contact work, our line out work is going to be important and is certain to be a huge challenge for us. We have to be very careful not to over-train this group of players.”

Rowntree will have an input into team selection and noted that despite outside opinion to the contrary the Test team is not yet chosen. “In every area of that pack, in every row, we have difficult decisions and we will make them Tuesday evening; we’ve got to be very clear here, we haven’t picked anything yet. There is a big carrot there for a number of players,” he said.

He is pleased with progress, saying: “We were under the cosh against Western Province; it was a tough game, a hard game, a game that asked questions of our players. We should have taken more of our opportunities, but I would rather be in the situation where we won a hard match rather than not.”