Lions back-row mix remains a puzzler – five talking points

Joe Schmidt exited the GIO Stadium in Canberra on Wednesday night with a smile and a nod for everyone who looked in his direction.

While visiting fans were milling about, perhaps wondering what to make of all the good, the bad and the ugly from the British and Irish Lions’ 36-24 win against the Brumbies, the Wallabies coach was a picture of contentment. “Hello there… How’re ya doing…”

In a bad week – his team’s stumbling performance against Fiji followed by a downbeat press conference about how low Wallaby expectations are of turning over the Lions, and then the loss of his fly-half Noah Lolesio through injury – this must have been a bit of a pick-me-up for Schmidt.

He was smiling just to be friendly, of course, but if you’re in his position and you’ve just watched what looked like the Lions Test team concede four tries and 15 turnovers to a Brumbies team missing eight of their best players, then you’d be entitled to feel some encouragement, even if things in his own garden aren’t exactly blooming.

The mixed bag, the curate’s egg. We’re running out of ways of describing the Lions who roar, but only occasionally. The Lions did deliver a lot that was sharp and classy. The good was very good, but shipping so many points to a second-string Brumbies, whose first string is hardly stellar in rugby’s grand scheme, is not the stuff of wonder.

If the Lions are progressing, then it’s stop-start, so if they’re going to blow the doors off in the Test series – which begins on 19 July – then they have a bit to find.

Anyone could see where the Lions are struggling the most – the breakdown. They’ve tried all manner of different combinations and they’re still toiling, still being hunted by voracious Australian forwards and still being pinged by referees who are watching them closely. The Lions now have a reputation on the floor and it’s not a good one.

Against the Pumas, head coach Andy Farrell went with Tom Curry, Jac Morgan and Ben Earl as his six, seven and eight. Against the Force in Perth, he had Tadhg Beirne, Josh van der Flier and Henry Pollock.

A few days later, against the Reds in Brisbane, it was Curry, Morgan and Jack Conan. Then, Beirne, Van der Flier and Earl against the Waratahs (where a former beer delivery man called Charlie Gamble bossed the show).

And against the Brumbies it was Ollie Chessum, Curry and Conan.

Farrell wants to give all of his back rows a proper chance, but he’s done that now and he still hasn’t hit on a trio that can deal effectively with the breakdown against opponents who are seriously denuded of international class, most of them away with the Wallabies. What would these games have been like had the provincial teams fielded full-strength sides?

The problems keep happening. Chessum is a horse of a man who’s aggressive and can shift, so maybe he’s in the box-seat at blindside. Conan carried big again on Wednesday and he’ll be the number eight. Who’s the seven?

Against the Brumbies, Curry was given the chance to play himself into the Test team and didn’t really convince. Does Farrell persist? Does he send for Morgan? Or does he revert to Van der Flier, his seven with Ireland, and a guy he knows better than the rest?

He’s been quiet. Too quiet. But keeping Tadhg Furlong quiet for long is a job that’s proved beyond the ken of most rival props over the course of his storied career.

Injury has hit him hard this past while. Big games have come and gone for club and country and he hasn’t been seen. In the early rumblings on this tour he didn’t look himself, it didn’t look like the world-class talent that stretches from his top to his toe was still there.

But maybe we’re over-analysing. There were signs of a beast awakening against the Brumbies. A good scrummaging performance, some big work around the field, an engine running more powerfully and for longer than recently.

A friend messaged when Furlong took his leave of the action in Canberra. This friend talks of scrummaging in ways that are at times, frankly, a little disconcerting. The passion rises within him when the props do their thing.

Farrell would not be drawn on the left knee injury to Blair Kinghorn that caused him to leave the pitch after 25 minutes.

Farrell said that the Toulouse full-back was down the corridor getting treatment – and singing. Always upbeat, Kinghorn. Let’s hope it stays that way.

The coach has already lost one wonderful full-back in Elliot Daly, then watched another, Hugo Keenan, suffer illness and withdraw from the Reds game in Brisbane. Keenan then had a bad day against the Waratahs.

Kinghorn will hopefully be fine, but the way things are going at 15, it’s hard to fight the fatalism. Farrell is on record saying that he has loads of full-backs, or players who can do a turn at full-back.

Not exactly loads. He’s got Keenan, Marcus Smith, Huw Jones, Mack Hansen, maybe. For a Lions series? A stretch. Only one of those is a stock–in-trade full-back, although England are trying to turn Smith into one.

Bundee Aki and Garry Ringrose versus Sione Tuipulotu and Huw Jones. That’s a first-world problem, that. That’s two midfield combinations of the highest class. Quite honestly, the Test Lions would be in safe hands with either partnership.

Aki got off to a ropey start in Canberra but grew into it and ran with directness. Ringrose was just quality in pretty much everything he did. In the nicest possible sense, he’s a madman for the physical exchanges, a missile, as Tuipulotu called him after they played together in Perth.

How many players split opinion like Owen Farrell? How many have the capacity to turn a perfectly lovely evening into a skin-and-hair-flying slugfest at the mere mention of his name and whether he should be here or not?

He will feature against the AUNZ Invitational team in Adelaide on Saturday, a tricky assignment given the decent calibre of player they have managed to put together. He has had one training session in 10 weeks.

No game since 4 May, 18 minutes since 27 April and no Test match in 20 months. In recent times he has had a groin operation, a visit to a specialist in Doha, a concussion that has kept him out for months.

People hope he can breeze back in and be the Owen Farrell he once was, when he hasn’t been that Owen Farrell for at least a year, and has been an in-and-out version of that Owen Farrell for a lot more years than that. At times wondrous, at other times ordinary, at different times injured, at all times talked about.

The man has been a great, great player. Modern rugby titans – Johnny Sexton, Maro Itoje – revere him, so seeing what he can do on Saturday after so long away from this kind of scene is going to be compelling.