Lions bite back to vindicate Gatland

Australia 16 British and Irish Lions 41

Those are the two outcomes big-time Test rugby offers with nothing in between, and Warren Gatland knew he was walking the fine line between the two extremes as he headed into Saturday’s third and final Test.

The British & Irish Lions head coach had set his stall out with his team selection for this series decider with Australia and taken terrible abuse for having the temerity to drop the iconic Brian O’Driscoll.

It was a decision he said he had arrived at having stripped sentiment and emotion out of the equation, focusing purely on his rugby instincts, a valuable lesson he had learned, ironically, as Ireland coach a dozen years ago, when the chance of a Grand Slam evaporated at Murrayfield after he went against his better judgement.

In Sydney, at a sold-out ANZ Stadium on Saturday, Gatland’s judgement was vindicated as the players he selected did him and the four home nations proud with a comprehensive overpowering of a shellshocked Wallabies side that had started the game as favourites.

It was a victory even O’Driscoll could savour, his contribution to this tour not ending with his omission as he continued to play a leadership role in the team room and allowing the great Irish icon the chance to finally tick the box marked ‘Lions series winner’.

For in a week when cold, hard rugby thinking prevailed in the selection meeting, the Lions got the emotional level just right on the pitch and at the most important point in the tour.

Not the overwrought emotion of the previous week when they sought to end a 16-year run of failure at the earliest opportunity in the second Test only to come up painfully short. This was instead a clinically intense and ferocious assault on Australian nerves that had Robbie Deans’ team in trouble from the first whistle when scrum-half Will Genia dropped Jonathan Sexton’s deep kick-off.

They were on the back foot from that knock-on onwards, Alex Corbisiero’s try inside two minutes the first dagger through home hearts before the Lions forwards continued to provide an excellent platform at the set-piece and breakdown for Leigh Halfpenny’s excellent goal-kicking and Sexton’s back line to finally show their potency.

And how they showed it, carving the Australian defence apart to quell the hosts’ comeback from 19-3 down just before half time to 19-16 six minutes after the interval with a three-try second-half rampage.

Less thinking about the end of 16 years of failure and more focus on emulating the deeds of the 1997 Lions, whose 2-1 win over the Springboks they have now matched.

“I think we talked about it a bit too much last week,” Sexton, the first of three-second-half try-scorers, said. “We forgot about our performance and actually trying to do the things that we needed to do to win the game. We knew we weren’t going to just be able to dog it out against a team like Australia, with guys like Genia pulling the strings and the firepower that they have, so we did a lot of homework last week on him and we managed to shut him down. He caused us some trouble at times but we did a good job.”

Gatland and his defence coach Andy Farrell had suggested last week that the Australians had invested too much emotion into getting back on level terms in the series to be able to repeat the same level of intensity in the decider and the head coach elaborated on the theme yesterday in a bid to explain the scoreline, a stark contrast to the tight affairs of the previous two Tests.

“In big games there’s a lot of emotion involved. I thought the Australian emotion last week was something we didn’t match. They were more desperate than we were and got some momentum,” Gatland said.

“We questioned whether they’d be able to repeat that emotion. There were also another few levels from us in terms of performance and we worked hard on getting our game right.

“It’s not easy to finish strongly in one Test and go straight into the next and expect that to be your starting point. You’ve got to go through the process again.”

The Lions certainly did that, going back to the drawing board in terms of personnel, allowing the players a couple of days’ decompression at the Queensland seaside and really getting minds back on the job when it mattered.

“I thought emotionally we were good,” Gatland said. “I thought Alun-Wyn Jones did a great job captaining the side and leading this week. I thought the coaches were fantastic, the guys that supported myself in terms of their contribution and motivation in getting the players to the right level. There was a real calmness about us, but a real focus and I thought as the game went on we got stronger.

“We knew, and we spoke all along, even though we were challenged physically we knew we were in pretty good shape. We worked hard, some of the players physically during the tour felt it was the best shape they’ve ever been in, in their lives. And that’s at the end of a long, hard season. For us that was vindication that we were getting things right off the field.”

The Australians were out-scrummaged, out-rucked and out-muscled, their fly-half James O’Connor describing the Lions as playing like men possessed as they punished the Wallabies’ every mistake, either through player of the series Halfpenny’s five penalties or the full-back’s creativity with ball in hand, creating the opening for both Sexton and George North’s tries. There was strength off the bench too, with Conor Murray prominent in the final half-hour, coming of age on this tour to set up Jamie Roberts with a short, sharp and well-timed pass for the final try of a night when everything finally went right for the men in red.

AUSTRALIA: K Beale; I Folau (J Mogg, 27), A Ashley-Cooper, C Leali’ifano, J Tomane; J O’Connor, W Genia (N Phipps, 67); B Robinson (J Slipper, 66), S Moore (S Fainga’a, 72), B Alexander (S Kepu, 35); K Douglas (R Simmons, 62), J Horwill — captain; B Mowen, G Smith (M Hooper, 5-9 and 66; S Kepu, 27-35), W Palu (B McCalman, 59).

Yellow card: B Alexander 24-34

BRITISH & IRISH LIONS: L Halfpenny; T Bowe, J Davies, J Roberts (M Tuilagi, 67), G North; J Sexton (O Farrell, 63), M Phillips (C Murray, 51); A Corbisiero (M Vunipola, 68), R Hibbard (T Youngs, 47), A Jones(D Cole, 55); A-W Jones — captain, G Parling (R Gray, 68); D Lydiate, S O’Brien (J Tipuric, 59), T Faletau (J Tipuric, 55-59).

Referee: Romain Poite (France).