Weakened Lions must find impact off bench

It’s close now. Once the Test 15s were announced, the Lions 23 retreats into its own bubble and prepares for a searching gut check, one of the most forensic of their rugby lives.

Those of us on the outside kill the time parsing, guessing, analysing. And then analysing some more.

Jamie Roberts and Manu Tuilagi haven’t made it for Brisbane. A big concern. I spent yesterday willing four-legged thoroughbreds to run that bit faster at Royal Ascot; the Lions are shorn of two thoroughbreds in the centre tomorrow against Australia. That’s 34 stone of horsepower taken out of midfield.

I’m not sure people realise or understand the full impact of players missing through injury. The bench is crucial in these games — it’s all about impact — but when your squad is compromised by injury, it dilutes that impact coming off the bench. The management will not have the game-changing options tomorrow they would have banked on when they penned their initial selections a month ago.

This Lions Test team, like many others, will feature five/six drivers and 10 more playing their own game to the best of their ability. Those drivers — O’Connell, Warburton, O’Driscoll, Sexton, Phillips, and Alun Wyn Jones — when they know there’s quality replacements backing them up, it lifts them off the ground that second earlier, it gets them into the defensive line half a second earlier, it pushes them a little bit harder because they know that after an hour, there’s quality reinforcements coming over the hill. That’s a huge lift for senior players, that you’re not fretting and looking over your shoulder wondering ‘who’s coming in now?’.

Jonny Sexton is a key driver tomorrow as a 10, all the more so now that he’s not kicking. His primary duty is to drive the team, put them in the right places. Field position, as we saw with the Brumbies on Tuesday night, is crucial. They played cup rugby and got the result. Jake White and Laurie Fisher played northern hemisphere rugby in the southern hemisphere — field position, tackle, tackle, tackle. As he tweeted back to me during the week, it’s a tested and proven formula that works.

The game can be as complicated as you want it to be but Roberts makes it simple by getting over the gain line, giving his team front foot ball. That’s why he will be a massive loss.

With front foot ball, there are options, but if the first collision is a negative outcome, the ball will be slowed down, the breakdown will be a mess, and the Wallaby defensive line will be set. It’s just difficult.

With positive collisions, the ball is on a plate for Phillips, onto Sexton. It’s joue, as we say in France. It just happens instinctively. There’s nothing worse from a 10’s point of view when you’re waiting for ball at the bottom of a ruck and there’s a shitfight at the breakdown. Seconds matter in this game. In fact, fractions of seconds matter.

Denied the impact of Roberts and Tuilagi from the start, you might have made a case for Sean O’Brien and Simon Zebo being on the bench.

Warren Gatland knows Dan Lydiate far better than I do, but I wouldn’t like to be in Sean O’Brien’s crosshairs in the next couple of training sessions. He’ll be firing into fellas, halving them. He won’t take this exclusion lying down, nor would you expect him to. A quality operator, he’ll be hurting.

Simon was steady against the Brumbies when he came on, but he probably needed to do a bit more to replace an original selection — or in this instance edge ahead of Sean Maitland. I’d be a small bit concerned about the strapping on Zebo’s leg, but I haven’t spoken to him as to whether he is struggling a small bit with that.

It ultimately came down to Maitland v Zebo v Stuart Hogg for that spot on the bench. The selectors have backed Maitland from the start. He needs to pay them back. Zebo’s done well but he probably needed another five per cent to edge ahead of the Scottish winger. However, he offers more in terms of impact — that word again — than Maitland.

These are the imponderables. Have Sexton, O’Driscoll and Davies played together on this tour? No. It’s a small bit worrying that Jon Davies is a 13 for Wales all year round and Brian O’Driscoll is a 13 for Ireland. It’s not as simple as people assume playing left and right in midfield. What system will they defend with? Is it something the Wallabies will target?

Robbie Deans has gone, as anticipated, with James O’Connor at 10. That’s a serious edge to the tourists. He’s talented and quite experienced, even at this young stage of his career, but watch around the hour mark tomorrow to see whether his forwards are working that bit harder because they believe in him getting them over the line.

We’ve seen in Clermont that unless they are 10 points out of sight after an hour, they don’t think they have the belief, nor the out-half, to go and shut down the game. If you put Jonny Wilkinson into Clermont, the results would be different. That kind of reputation is hard-earned and it’s early for O’Connor to expect it.

Despite being in Paris Monday and Tuesday, I still find myself walking in the footsteps of the week that’s in it. Australian media have gone in hard on certain players and it’s pretty ruthless. If you’re an experienced player, you shrug that stuff off, but for the new guys it can be upsetting and you learn to deal with it by experiencing it.

The lessons from the 2005 fiasco to New Zealand have been absorbed and put in place. Split squads is not the way to go. 2009 was a very united squad and I hear this tour is the same. Once the team to meet the Brumbies was named last Sunday night, the tea leaves were easier to read in terms of the Test selection. There will be disappointed players naturally, but there must be a massive emphasis on squad unity this week. No matter how big a name you are, you’d want to be a bit of a pup not to pull your weight and row in behind the Test team because it’s in adversity you show your true colours.

For the Test team, the Brumbies game would have been important but, from a selfish point of view, it wouldn’t have been too much on their radar. Arguably, the ‘performance’ might even have taken a small bit of pressure off the Test players; they would have taken solace from fellas who were breathing down their necks not producing against the Brumbies. That might give the Test team extra confidence. Sometimes wins come too easy, and they have done on this Lions tour. A little dart in the ribs like Canberra might help the focus.

Ultimately, the tour is about — and will be remembered for — the three Tests. I’m expecting the Lions to win — presuming they don’t concede too many points early. If they keep the back door closed, they still have enough match-winners to get them over the line.

But it isn’t all on the first Test. People shouldn’t get hung up on that.