Coaches banking on Lions’ power game in final test

Warren Gatland and his British and Irish Lions think-tank emerged from their night of the long knives convinced they have a match-day squad to win the third and final Test against Australia on Saturday.

After six weeks and nine matches beginning in Hong Kong, the Lions selectors — Gatland plus coaches Graeme Rowntree, Rob Howley, Andy Farrell and Neil Jenkins — still have a first series victory in 16 years within their grasp.

Yet having lost the second Test in Melbourne last Saturday, if only by the narrowest of margins, the feeling as they convened in Noosa on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast on Tuesday night was that the Wallabies were in the box seat and drastic changes were needed if this tour was to emulate the 1997 series win over South Africa and not go the way of the previous three.

The decision to drop Brian O’Driscoll in favour of an all-Welsh midfield featuring the fit-again Jamie Roberts and Jon Davies was always going to be an emotive one for fans, particularly in Ireland, where the outside centre is hero-worshipped. It should not, however, cloud the fact the Lions will be bigger and stronger all around for the six changes Gatland has made for Saturday’s showdown.

They won’t win any prizes for pretty rugby but Gatland thinks they can win the series.

Alun Wyn Jones replaces the injured Sam Warburton as captain in a team featuring 10 Wales players, with Ireland’s Sean O’Brien taking over from tour skipper Warburton at openside flanker, while Roberts, recovered from a hamstring strain which kept him out of the first two Tests, moves into the No.12 jersey vacated by Davies, who replaces O’Driscoll at outside centre. Also back from injury are Wales scrum-half Mike Phillips who starts ahead of Ben Youngs, with Conor Murray retaining his place on the bench at the expense of the Englishman, and Alex Corbisiero who replaces Mako Vunipola at loosehead. On a bad day for the Youngs family, Richard Hibbard makes his first Test start at hooker with Ben’s brother Tom dropping to the bench alongside Vunipola. Toby Faletau makes a Test debut at No.8 where Jamie Heaslip is another casualty, the Irish captain dropped from the squad after starting the first two Tests, back-row cover provided by specialist openside Justin Tipuric with O’Brien able to slot in at 6 or 8.

Of the selection of Faletau over Heaslip, Gatland said: “Toby’s had a good tour, he’s been a little bit unlucky again, with selection. He’s been working really hard and we just think this position, someone’s coming in who’s going to get an opportunity. We just feel when the platform up front is really good for Jamie he can play a little bit looser, he carries well. Sometimes he needs to be prepared to play a little bit tighter in this game and hopefully Toby will give us that on Saturday.”

Gatland has made four changes to a pack that lost the lineout battle with the Wallabies last weekend in the absence of Paul O’Connell and had a mixed evening at scrum-time, while the team in general struggled to get across the gainline with any regularity and made no linebreaks.

Gatland clearly wants to change that and has brought in more beef to get the job done, not least with Roberts, Phillips, O’Brien and Faletau, while Hibbard and Corbisiero bring some technically superior scrummaging skills as well as more power to the front row.

“Australia have gone with a mindset to try and stop us at source from set-piece, to stop us from getting that platform we wanted and they were effective in doing that at lineout and scrum time,” Gatland said. “So we need to scrummage well and try influence the referee (Romain Poite) that we do have a dominance there, at scrum time.

It’s just a lottery at the moment, isn’t it? We felt that at no stage on Saturday were Australia pushing us back. We got a good hit on and you could see the power and pressure coming from us. It’s been frustrating for the players but they (Australia) did a good job with Genia coming around to try and unsettle us at the back scrum, like I said trying to stop a platform. And at lineout time they were effective as well. So it’s something we’ve worked on to make sure we get a better platform than we had last week.”