THE LIONS MOMENT THAT WILL MOST INFURIATE ANDY FARRELL
It seemed every time that the camera cut to the Lions coaching box, Andy Farrell was shaking his head. The Lions head coach had much to be disappointed by as a dozen or so players played their way out of Test contention in a collective performance against New South Wales Waratahs that lacked any fire.
More than anything, what Farrell prizes in a Lions setting are those players who bust a gut for their team-mates. The happiest that he has been on this trip was in discussing Mack Hansen’s double effort to get back to retrieve Ben Donaldson’s kick ahead before chasing his own kick to force a scrum. It was far from a consequential moment in a routine victory against the Western Force, but, as Farrell said, it epitomised “the type of spirit that we want throughout the team”.
It was also notable that on Saturday night Farrell name-checked Scott Cummings, who had endured a difficult match against the Western Force, after his try-saving intervention, sprinting back to snuff out a Waratahs breakout from a turnover.
Yet amid the multitude of knock-ons, missed tackles and bad kicks, there was one incident that summed up the Lions’ night and will leave Farrell especially furious.
It came in the 58th minute with the Lions in possession in midfield. Flanker Josh van der Flier steps off his right foot to initiate a line-break with Ellis Genge going with him. Van der Flier offloads to Genge who is quickly tackled by Matt Philip. This is a perfect attacking opportunity with front-foot ball on the edge of the Waratahs’ 22.
However, Van der Flier overruns his clear-out and suddenly the Lions are in trouble as the outstanding Charlie Gamble enters the scene. Scrum-half Alex Mitchell is initially the only player to arrive in support and the Waratahs’ openside flanker duly wins a holding-on penalty.
What would have alarmed Farrell the most was that when Genge is tackled, five Waratahs forwards get back to fold into the defensive line before Tadhg Beirne finally arrives in support of Mitchell’s losing battle. At the point that Van der Flier makes his step, there are five forwards, including Genge, in his immediate vicinity as well as Fin Smith and Sione Tuipulotu.
This was a simple failure of effort. The Waratahs forwards worked harder to get back onside than the Lions pack did to administer the clean-out. Skill-execution errors – and there were plenty of those – are forgivable in Farrell’s eyes; being out-hustled and outfought are not, especially by a side whom the local media expected to ship 70 points.
It is a shameful act of bias towards the winning side that man of the match was awarded to Van der Flier when he and all the Lions forwards were played off the park by Gamble, who came up with four turnovers. Gamble, who sports a superb Australian moustache, has never played Test rugby. In fact, just a few years ago he was playing semi-professionally in the NSW Suburban Rugby while working as a beer delivery driver. “I was rolling kegs and delivering beers to pubs, it was actually pretty cool,” said Gamble, who looked every bit the equal if not superior to Van der Flier, the 2022 World Player of the Year.
In total, the Waratahs won 10 turnovers to the Lions’ one – the tourists also committed 20 turnovers – as part of a premeditated assault on the breakdown. The Waratahs had studied the way in which Argentina had also caused the Lions all manner of problems in the 28-24 victory in Dublin and felt that both the Western Force and Queensland Reds, who both took 50-point beatings, had been too passive in that area.
“We watched a bit of film,” Gamble said. “We thought Argentina really put pressure on them, came off the line and gave them less time to play the ball to the edge. We thought the Force and Reds held back. Our game plan was always to press off the line and try to force an error. They were probably pretty frustrated at how they looked after the breakdown and the breakdown was at the centre of our game plan. Our brutality is key to how we play.”
Joe Schmidt, the Australia head coach, who is preparing for the Wallabies’ own warm-up match against Fiji in Newcastle on Sunday, will have been taking copious notes.
Had the Waratahs scrum been remotely solid then the Lions would have been in serious trouble. The set-piece was one area that noticeably improved from the past two performances on Australian soil, but, like whack a mole, as soon as one problem is solved then another one appears, giving Farrell much to chew over when the Lions jump on the bus to Canberra on Monday.
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2025-07-05T16:55:41Z