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There was no mistaking the word of the night at the Suncorp Stadium after the British and Irish Lions’ first Test win over Australia – desperation.
As in, Wallaby desperation. As in, they’ll be so desperate to keep the series alive in Melbourne on Saturday they’ll metamorphose into a team of belligerence and belief – a band of brothers who will blow the Lions away.
“We expect them to be desperate,” said Lions centre Sione Tuipulotu after the 27-19 victory.
“When an Australia team becomes desperate, it’s difficult to handle,” said head coach Andy Farrell.
“The desperation is all on the line for them at the weekend,” said prop Tadhg Furlong.
Flanker Tadhg Beirne also spoke about Australian desperation. So did Wallabies head coach Joe Schmidt, repeatedly, and so did his replacement scrum-half Tate McDermott and others.
And they will be desperate, no question, but how far does desperation get you?
Schmidt said his team had desperation written all over their performance in Brisbane, and he meant it as a compliment. He admired their hunger and their refusal to wilt.
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For drama and intrigue, we want the series to go to the wire, so we construct an argument around that.
The fightback exposed weaknesses in the Lions make-up. Things might have been closer had big calls gone with the Wallabies – a possible yellow card for Tom Curry for taking Tom Lynagh in the air, a possible yellow for Furlong going high on Len Ikitau, a possible yellow for a Ben Earl no-arms tackle on Joseph Suaalii. What might have been…
So, the argument goes that the hosts will have confidence going to Melbourne because of the second-half tries and all their possession and territory and near-misses in the try stakes. Will Skelton and Rob Valetini will come back into the side and make them way better. More grist to the mill.
A counterpoint is this: they’re both class players, but Valetini won’t have played in over five weeks by the time Saturday comes around, and Skelton won’t have played in six weeks.
It should also be remembered the pair of them – plus Langi Gleeson and Noah Lolesio, both injured – all played and lost comprehensively when the Wallabies faced Scotland last November.
We can overdo the notion that adding Skelton and Valetini to the mix is going to fundamentally change a team that is sixth in the world – and only sixth because Argentina dropped below them after losing twice to England, and Scotland dropped below them after being beaten by Fiji. They’re sixth by default. Realistically, they’re eighth in the world.
Johnny Sexton was interesting on Friday when asked about the fire and brimstone the Wallabies were expected to produce from the off in Brisbane.
The Lions kicking coach said that kind of thing only gets you so far. It might buy you five or 10 minutes but then peters out and there’s a game to play. Desperation guarantees nothing.
Everybody who believes the series is best served by the Wallabies delivering a bloody nose to the Lions and taking it to a third game will have a quiet support for Schmidt’s team.
It’s more an exercise in wishful thinking than anything else. The optimists from an Australian perspective will look to the final 30 minutes in Brisbane for hope. So let’s look at those 30 minutes and ask if the Lions are as likely to be as wasteful and ill-disciplined for a second week in a row.
A sloppy Jamison Gibson-Park pass to Finn Russell and a knock-on. Freakish inaccuracy from two majestic operators. A Russell kick charged down, Furlong conceding a penalty, Andrew Porter conceding a penalty, Curry conceding a penalty, an offside penalty, then another, then a forced pass from Jack Conan to Bundee Aki and a spillage, then another Australia penalty.
That was all in 15 minutes or so when the Lions were 24-5 ahead. And it continued. Tommy Freeman forces a pass and knocks on, Maro Itoje knocks on, Hugo Keenan misses a tackle on Harry Potter.
After all of that, the Lions still had a 15-point advantage, only reduced to eight a couple of minutes from time. The difference between the Lions from minute one to minute 49 and the Lions from minute 50 to minute 80 was stark.
If they play for 60 or 70 minutes on Saturday the way they played for 50 in Brisbane they’ll win by a street because the Wallabies are undercooked and not particularly good – despite many of us wishing they were good enough to make a proper series of it.
And the Lions at their best were very, very good. They were on a different plain, physically and creatively, than the Wallabies. When Dan Sheehan finished off their third try – a thing of real beauty – the temptation was to reach for the record books because it really did feel like an epic shellacking was on its way.
Maybe tiredness derailed the Lions. Maybe subconsciously they switched off – an idea floated by Farrell, then shot down by Itoje. The Wallabies grew into it only when the game was already over. The chances of a repeat of such a high error count? Limited.
The show has now moved on to Melbourne, where the Lions will play arguably their most meaningless game since 1950, when they went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to play a side consisting of local businessmen, some armed forces and a cricketer.
On Tuesday, the Lions will face First Nations and Pasifika. They’ve called up a 45th player – Scotland’s Gregor Brown. He’ll join Ewan Ashman, Rory Sutherland, Darcy Graham, Jamie Osborne and Tom Clarkson as the ‘Geography Six’ of 2025.
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- British & Irish Lions
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