Ex-Aussie coach Dwyer claims Lions are cheats

World Cup-winning former Wallabies coach Bob Dwyer has labelled the Lions cheats.

Dwyer is adamant the tourists are flouting the laws of rugby on so many fronts that for the good of the game it cannot be allowed to continue.

“We have a great game and there is massive scope for playing attractive rugby,” Dwyer told The Weekend Australian yesterday. “It’s not supposed to be a contest to see who can cheat the best. It’s who can play the best.”

And not content with stirring the ire of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, he even has found a way to fire off a barb at the old enemy across the ditch.

“One comment I’d like to make after having seen the Lions in action on tour is that it doesn’t come as any surprise they’re coached by a New Zealander because they play outside the laws of the game as every New Zealand side does.”

The Lions, he insists, scrummage illegally. Their hookers push upwards. This he attributes to Dylan Hartley, the Northampton and England hooker ruled out of this tour after being suspended for calling referee Wayne Barnes “a f ... ing cheat” — which is a little ironic if you accept the drift of Dwyer’s argument.

According to the long-serving former Australia coach, it was Hartley who made an art form of not so much pushing forward in scrums as pushing upwards to pop his opposing hooker out of the set piece.

Almost invariably referees penalise the first front-rower to stand up in a scrum, as the Lions themselves discovered in the first Test against the Springboks on the 2009 tour when South African prop Tendai ‘Beast’ Mtawarira repeatedly drove Phil Vickery up and almost out of the scrum. “The thinking seems to be that if you can get a penalty so easily, why not do it?” Dwyer said.

He also accuses the Lions props of binding illegally, putting their hand on the ground for extra stability and, most notably in the case of Mako Vunipola, of angling in from the loosehead side.

He also accuses the Lions of knowingly employing illegal tactics for kick-off receipts.

“At times against the Combined Country side, there were four of them in a line ahead of the catcher. One of them made an almost childish imitation of trying to catch the ball to persuade the ref he wasn’t doing anything wrong. You can’t screen the catcher. Surely that was obvious to anyone watching the game.”