Wallabies ratchet up the pressure
All it took was for White’s ACT Brumbies to execute the formula he and his coaches Laurie Fisher and Stephen Larkham calculated would unsettle Warren Gatland’s tourists, and lead to their first defeat by a provincial side since Northern Transvaal turned over the 1997 Lions in South Africa.
The Lions have lost non-Test tour matches since, but Australia A in 2001 and New Zealand Maori four years later were representative sides. On Tuesday, these Brumbies were an understrength Super XV outfit keen to avenge their predecessors’ narrow defeat 12 years ago and disciplined enough to stick to White’s game plan of hustle and harry at the breakdown and bodies-on-the-line defence for 80 minutes.
Just 24 hours earlier, before he had sent the Lions reeling with that defeat to gee up the Wallabies and sow some seeds of doubt in the tourists’ minds, White had pulled no punches in outlining the consequences of a first Test defeat in Brisbane this weekend.
“It’s all or nothing for Saturday,” the 2007 World Cup-winning coach said. “Whoever wins the first Test will win the series. I think Warren knows that this Lions side will crumble if they don’t win in Brisbane. If they lose, they will crumble.
“They have staked everything on winning that first Test match. They played in Hong Kong in the heat, in the rain against the Reds, they’ve tried combinations against the Waratahs and they are resting players against us.
“And that’s fine, because Gatland knows that this first Test will make or break the series. They will believe the game time, combinations and time they’ve had to gel on-field performances with off-field synergies and dynamics, will be enough to carry them through the first Test match.”
The Lions side beaten by White’s Brumbies may have been understrength but the way his players set about a back row combination of Sean O’Brien, Justin Tipuric and Toby Faletau, who would not look out of place in the Test line-up, alerted Robbie Deans and his Wallabies to the possibilities and potential of causing mayhem at the breakdown.
It was a theme Waratahs coach Michael Cheika had focused on, albeit with less success in Sydney last Saturday, although after a 47-17 defeat he said the Wallabies would do well to target the breakdown.
“It’s very clear that the Lions are excellent at the ruck, on both sides of the ball. We were putting sledgehammers in there trying to get to the ball to pick it up.
“I thought we had a couple of steals, but unfortunately they weren’t given. But I think the ruck will decide the flow of the game. I think we have seen the set-pieces are going to be particularly even so I think that part of the game [the breakdown] is where it will probably be decided.”
Part and parcel with that was the targeting by the Waratahs of the Lions half-backs, with Gatland complaining Mike Phillips and Jonny Sexton were subjected to “off the ball stuff”.
Cheika, understandably, saw it differently: “I thought we gave them a good shake around the fringes of the ruck.
“You’ve got to put heat on the nine and 10 at this level because the way they play, the Lions, they’re orchestrating everything out there — the direction, the plays, when they’re going to go etc. So you’ve got to keep them hopping and give yourself a chance of shutting down their attack.”
Lest Gatland be tempted to take the moral high ground, Brumbies and former Munster forwards coach Laurie Fisher said such targeting was hardly new to the game.
“We try to put pressure on nine and 10 in every game that we play,” Fisher told the Irish Examiner this week. “It’s a prime tenet of our defensive structure, our defenders at the ruck not defending space but putting pressure on people.
“You don’t want to let a Phillips or a Ben Youngs or a Conor Murray float around and just pick off their runners and I guarantee you the Lions will have strategies to go at [Will] Genia, understanding how important he is.
“So both teams are going to do it. If you can disrupt at nine, that’s the crucial link between backs and forwards, it must have an impact on the game. Obviously you’ve got to deal within the laws of the game but both sides will want to exert pressure on that part of the game.”
All Gatland wants is equal treatment, both in protecting his half-backs and at the breakdown, something the Lions camp felt they weren’t getting from Tuesday’s referee Jerome Garces against the Brumbies, when the tourists were persistently penalised for not rolling away sufficiently quickly after making the tackle.
“It’s all down to how the referee referees that, in terms of the tackler rolling away, and allowing us to get over the ball and win the shoulder battle,” Lions backs coach Rob Howley said yesterday. “We have to be allowed to do that so there has to be a separation between the ball-carrier and your support system. [Tuesday] night we felt that we weren’t allowed to get into that separation, maybe down to our technical deficiencies, but also because there wasn’t a clear separation at the contact area.
“The way [first Test referee] Chris Pollock refereed the second Test out in Australia [against Wales] last year, we’re more than happy that the tackler will have to roll away and we can get our support systems around the ball. We’re quite happy with Chris Pollock refereeing, he’s an outstanding referee.”
Lions supporters will be hoping Howley’s buttering up of Saturday’s referee does the job. The tourists are facing a big enough challenge as it is.
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