Makeshift Lions fail to make Test case

Act Brumbies 14 British & Irish Lions 12

All talk of going unbeaten for the entire 10-game tour was forgotten as the Lions head coach tried to quickly draw a line under this lacklustre, ragged performance before the malaise spreads to the Test squad he hopes can front up against Australia in the first Test in Brisbane on Saturday.

It was the right thing to do. The Lions had suffered a first defeat to a provincial side since Northern Transvaal won in 1997 and if Gatland was to draw any comfort from that it was clearly that predecessor Ian McGeechan’s squad went on to win the Test series with South Africa, the last touring party to return home to these islands victorious.

The Lions, most likely to be missing key wingers Tommy Bowe and George North for the opening shots of the battle with the Wallabies at Suncorp Stadium, can ill-afford to let the defeated midweek side let all the momentum built over five successive victories grind suddenly to a halt in the most important week of the tour so far.

Gatland knows that better than anyone and he was philosophical in defeat, saying: “It’s part of being on tour; re-grouping when you get a bit of a knock. You take the disappointment and it’s about how you respond to it, it’s about how this group of players respond to it at the weekend.

“A lot of us have been through it in the past; you’ve had a knock and it’s about getting back on the horse again.

“We’ve been building nicely and had a lot of momentum, but sometimes it’s not the worst thing to take a bit of a knock and get a reality check. We had that this evening.”

As reality checks go it was more than sobering as the Brumbies, expertly managed by South Africa’s 2007 World Cup-winning coach Jake White to the top of Super XV’s Australian Conference in just his second season at the Canberra franchise, learned from the mistakes of their fellow provincial sides on this tour as they put in an 80-minute performance.

They still started like a bull out of the gate, just as Queensland Reds had done, Tevita Kuridrani causing confusion in the Lions back three to power over the line in the fifth minute for the game’s one and only try.

And they tore into the breakdown to unsettle the Lions just as the Waratahs had tried.

The difference was they maintained their effort throughout, capitalising on sloppy play from the tourists, not just in the rucks but behind them where the half-back pairing of Ben Youngs and Stuart Hogg failed to impose themselves on the game, Hogg in particular exposing Gatland’s decision to bring just two fly-halves on the tour in the hope his Scottish full-back could fill in as the third man.

Heaven help the Lions if Hogg, still new to Test rugby as a full-back, has to cover at out-half in the Test series because if the Brumbies can unsettle him then goodness knows what the Wallabies will do to him. Hogg’s two missed penalties, both hitting the uprights, may have cost the Lions this game if not for three missed kicks from the Brumbies, but it was the overall lack of intensity and accuracy that did for Gatland’s second string.

“We were disappointed at half-time, we just didn’t have the urgency and intensity in that first half,” Gatland said. “We got a bit better in the second half but we were disappointed. The Brumbies played well and frustrated us and it was a tough day.

“I can’t tell at the moment if there’ll be a positive reaction to this. We’ll have to see. Obviously there’s a lot of people in the squad who are disappointed with this evening. It wasn’t a great game of rugby.

“The Brumbies didn’t play any rugby. We’ve given them a fairly soft try and then there’s just been a battle of the breakdown for the next 75 minutes. There’s a few things for us to work on. Maybe it’s an indication for Australia that they may compete pretty hard at the breakdown.”

Gatland will have convened his coaching staff last night to pick over the carcass of that performance in the hope of finding some morsels of encouragement but in truth, the Brumbies have made their job of selecting a Test team all the easier given that nobody in the starting line-up, save perhaps for Toby Faletau, genuinely made a case for inclusion this weekend.

It will be the medical report that the head coach was due to receive today from head doctor James Robson that will have more of an influence on selection, given the importance Gatland places on his big but injured wings Tommy Bowe and George North as well as midfield battering-ram Jamie Roberts to deliver the gameplan he envisages will finally get the better of Wallabies’ head coach Robbie Deans.

Gatland will be hoping their fitness status is considerably less fragile than the Lions proved against the Brumbies yesterday.

ACT BRUMBIES: J Mogg; H Speight, T Kuridrani, A Smith (R Coleman, 75), C Rathbone (Z Holmes, 72); M Toomua (M Swanepoel, 75), I Prior; R Smith, S Siliva (J Mann-Rea, 56), S Sio; L Power (E Oosthuizen, 75), S Carter (J Smiler, 67); S Fardy, C Faingaa, P Kimlin – captain.

BRITISH & IRISH LIONS: R Kearney; C Wade, B Barritt, B Twelvetrees, S Williams (S Zebo, 69); S Hogg (O Farrell, 60), B Youngs (C Murray, 60); R Grant (A Corbisiero, 56), R Best – captain (R Hibbard, 56), M Stevens (D Cole, 56); I Evans (G Parling, 60), R Gray; S O’Brien (D Lydiate, 56), J Tipuric, T Faletau.

Referee: Jerome Garces (France)