The good, the bad…and the future

The opposite emotions that greeted the dramatic end to the 2021 Castle Lager Lions series writ large the hunger for the concept to continue despite the steadily increasing obstacles being placed in the way in rugby’s modern era.

While even before Morne Steyn punted the final penalty of the series into touch to bring the deciding test to an official end the Springboks celebrated with the same unbridled joy that Siya Kolisi’s men did their World Cup final victory 21 months ago and John Smit and his team the second test win in 2009, the beaten British and Irish Lions were a picture of dejection.

Players on the bench fought back the tears as the reality that they had come across their bridge too far at the end of an epic journey sunk in. When he went in front of the television cameras to give his summation of the series, Lions captain Alun Wyn Jones was so emotional that he couldn’t talk. He struggled to hold back the tears.

That spoke of how much a Lions series matters to those involved. And while there wasn’t the 94 000 crowd present at Cape Town Stadium that there would have been at FNB Stadium had the tour proceeded without the changes forced by the pandemic, living rooms and pubs around South Africa gave way to raucous celebration. Conversely, north of the equator there was frustration.

No, among South Africans it wasn’t quite the same as the tumult that greeted the Bok win in the Rugby World Cup final in Yokohama, but the World Cup is a different thing. While the quest to market the series often embraces comparisons between the Lions series and the World Cup, the comparison is actually odious. The World Cup is the World Cup, a Lions tour is a Lions tour, and while the desire to win might be similar, they are not really the same.

What should be clear though from the way the players reacted at Cape Town Stadium and how fans from both hemispheres engaged with the series, is that Lions coach Warren Gatland is right when he says it should continue and that both the Lions players and the southern hemisphere players they play against want it too. It’s a big event, an occasion that rises above the normal.

There are challenges though to its continuation, not least the rival requirements of the Home Unions and their clubs that have continued to shrink the Lions tours to a point where if they shrunk any further you’d struggle to refer to it as a tour.

HOSTS NEED TO PLAY ALONG FOR TOUR GAMES TO BE MEANINGFUL

With each Lions tour to South Africa the tour matches played before the first test have become increasingly less meaningful. This was an abnormal year of course because of the pandemic, and the Bok coaches didn’t have any other option but to call up an extended squad of nearly 50 players.

That, and the fact that so many of South Africa’s top players are now playing overseas, meant that the games against the franchises were lopsided affairs, with the hosts fielding under-strength teams. As it turned out, the team that was most likely to push the Lions, the Vodacom Bulls, did not play them because of a Covid outbreak in their squad.

What it meant was that apart from the game against South Africa A, which turned into an unofficial fourth test because of the Covid outbreak that forced the Boks to field an almost test strength team, the Lions weren’t given the examination they needed ahead of the series. There weren’t fans present at any of the games because of the pandemic, but the lopsided games wouldn’t have done anything to promote interest for the television audience.

In future the host nation must find a way to make the opposition the Lions face before the test series begins more formidable or there really is no point in playing the tour games. That the Lions went beyond 50 in three of their four franchise games and were just one point shy of the half century in the fourth test did nothing to prepare them for the challenge they were to face in the business end of the tour and nothing to sell the series itself.

THAT SAID, LIONS APPROACH WAS ODD

Perhaps they wanted to keep the Springboks guessing, which would be understandable, but an oddity of the tour as a whole from a Lions perspective was how completely different the style they embraced in the franchise games was to the rugby they played in the series itself. They played something resembling touch rugby in the tour games, while in the matches against the Boks there was a big emphasis on the kicking game and the aerial battle. Surely they might have had more profit from the series itself had they worked on their strategy during the warm-up fixtures?

Perhaps it came down to the Lions underestimating the extent to which the Boks could imprint themselves on proceedings from a physical perspective and underestimated just how good the Bok defensive system was. The Bok defence had to scramble a bit once Finn Russell was introduced to the Lions team at flyhalf in the final test, but it still didn’t concede a try to anything other than a driving maul.

Maybe the Lions were forced to change their plan on the hoof, meaning at halftime in the first test. They were coming a poor second in that game, but in the second half they played the Boks at their own game and won. Naturally that seduced them into thinking they could continue that way in the next test, but the Bok coaches were astute enough to redress the team failings of the first test and this time it was the Boks who won the aerial battle and consequently the match.

The different dynamic injected by Russell in the final test did give a hint of what might have been had the Lions approached it differently, but again the point needs to be stressed - they still didn’t win with the Scot at flyhalf, and while they created more opportunities, they still didn’t score a backline try.

A STAT THAT CHALLENGES THE ACCEPTED NARRATIVE

The Lions and the travelling media liked to push the narrative that it was the Boring Boks against the Creative Attack Minded Lions, but that wasn’t the case. Neither do the stats or the stand-out memories from the series support that narrative. The Boks won very little ball in the second half of the first test, and yet still crossed the line three times with some enterprising rugby. Of course, two of those were disallowed, which will be covered in a later entry.

For the Lions the only try scored in that test came from a driving maul. And they only scored one more try in the series, also from a driving maul. In fact, if you factor in the unofficial fourth test against SA A, they scored three driving maul tries across four games against the Boks and that was it. The Boks scored four in the series itself and six across the four games - all from the backs.

Indeed, one of the confounding stats from the series if you consider how feared the Bok driving maul is supposed to be is that the Boks never scored once from lineouts set up in the Lions’ red zone.

FINE MARGINS

Just like the 2009 series, there was a fine margin between winning and losing. Just as in 2009 the Lions were left to lament the mistakes they made in the second half of a second test they had been bossing before that, and in particular the Ronan O’Gara error that presented Morne Steyn with his winning penalty, so they were left to regret poor decisions and missed opportunities 12 years later.

In the final test there were those three kickable penalties that were spurned for a kick to touch. There were of course four in all, but the first one they profited from with their only try of the match. Perhaps that seduced them into thinking they could persist with the tactic, but it cost them. They should definitely have kicked for posts to tie up the game when they were presented with an easy opportunity in the 68th minute. They were trailing 16-13 at the time and levelling the scores then might have made a difference to the end result.

There was also that missed try scoring opportunity when fullback Liam Williams failed to throw out a pass to an unmarked Josh Adams in the first half. Had the Lions scored then, they would have been 17-3 up and, as Gatland suggested afterwards, they would have forced the Boks into the unfamiliar role of having to play catch-up.

That wasn’t the only fine margin though that went against the Lions and made a difference to how the series panned out. Robbie Henshaw thought he had scored a try just before halftime in the first test, only for the TMO to discover that Bok skipper Siya Kolisi had done just enough with his excellent tackle to prevent the ball from being grounded properly. It was a close call and had it been awarded the Lions would have been more than a score ahead at halftime and might have wrapped up the series in the second test.

TURNING POINTS

Interestingly enough for a team that banked so much on forward play and physicality, the turning points of both tests that the Boks won were the product of excellent backline attack that saw wins score. The turning point of the series overall was probably the well targeted kick from Handre Pollard that saw Makazole Mapimpi score in the corner shortly after halftime in the second test. The Boks had been under pressure up until then, but that score transformed the game.

The Boks were already starting to assert some sort of physical ascendancy in the third quarter of the third test when Cheslin Kolbe scored his spectacular try, but South African fans would have been getting a bad feeling when Pollard missed two consecutive kicks. Thanks to the brilliance of Lukhanyo Am and the attacking instinct of Willie le Roux, a contestable kick was turned into a try scoring opportunity for Kolbe and he took it. After that the Lions were never ahead again and that played into the hands of a team that was driven by an indomitable spirit.

THE BAD

The focus in the series was turned onto the match officiating like it has seldom been before when Rassie Erasmus’ 62-minute video listing errors made by the referee in the first test was leaked to social media. Whether you want to blame Erasmus for it, or subscribe to the view that Lions coach Gatland started it with his complaints about the Faf de Klerk yellow card and Rassie’s role as a Bok waterboy in the SA A game, it was crystal clear to anyone who watched the video that there was a lot that was missed in that first test.

The upshot, apart from the spitefulness that intensified both on and off the field, was that the refereeing and TMO performance was much better for the rest of the series. The only problem was that the quest to get it right led to the game being slowed down and punctuated to the extent that we saw the first half of the second test last for a full 63 minutes. Sorry, but that is just too long and too drawn out.

In the final test Marius Jonker took the quest to be accurate to beyond any kind of sensible extreme when he and the onfield referee, Mathieu Raynal, were checking on Kolbe’s try. Raynal seemed quite convinced early in the process that it was a try, but Jonker kept offering him “different” angles that turned out to be the same angle. What was that about? Sorry, but while Jonker might have some supporters for suggesting to Raynal that time should be taken and the decision not rushed in the quest to be sure, it was pedantic to the extreme. There really should be some sort of stipulation that you get one or two looks and that is it. If there isn’t a clear and obvious infringement, the onfield decision stands.

What the laborious process that accompanies the TMO interruptions in the game does is take away the fatigue element from the sport. Carry on like that and teams won’t need reserves who impact on play later on in the game.

WHAT MADE THIS TOUR DIFFERENT

Yes, the empty stadiums were very different to what we saw in 2009, where each test was played in front of a large, boisterous crowd and the Bok players were confronted by "a sea of red" as they ran onto the field at King's Park, Loftus and Ellis Park. But that is not the only difference. This was also the first time an entire Lions series in South Africa was played at just one venue. That took away both the altitude advantage and the tour element, meaning the Lions having to adjust to a new venue and travelling on a Sunday after the game, that normally makes it more difficult for the visitors. The surrendering of that advantage made the Bok win all the more meritorious. This wasn't a series where they should have been seen as favourites.

THE PLAYER AWARDS

UNSUNG HERO

Talking of impact subs, Trevor Nyakane probably really can’t be referred to as an unsung hero, for his important contributions as a loosehead replacement late in both of the tests that the Boks won were lauded enough by the commentators and by the written media. They were crucial enough though to be highlighted again.

MAN OF THE SERIES

This has to go to Springbok captain Siya Kolisi, for the way he both captained the team and did so from the front. He had to endure some controversy around the way he was treated by the referee in the first test, and losing that first game would have been a crushing disappointment. Yet with the help of the coaching team and his fellow leadership members of the player group, Kolisi got himself off the floor to lead his team to victory.

Coming back from a test down in a Lions series to win it is unprecedented in the modern era. There was something else that was unprecedented - coming back to win a World Cup after losing the opening game. That happened to the Boks in 2019. There was a common denominator in both instances. In that Kolisi was the captain. His calmness and authority played a big part in the Bok triumph in this series.

BOK PLAYER OF THE SERIES

Eben Etzebeth. Of course there is a temptation to give it to one of the Bok wings, Makazole Mapimpi or Cheslin Kolbe, who scored the crucial tries, or even one of the excellent midfield combination of Damian de Allende and Lukhanyo Am, but if there was one man the Boks couldn’t do without in this series it was Etzebeth, who was an immense presence and no doubt thorn to the Lions in the physical exchanges and also made some crucial contributions in the lineout, such as when he got his hands to the ball when the Lions through into an attacking lineout in the first half of the third test. Etzebeth’s biggest rival for the award would be Franco Mostert, who has an engine big enough to make it seem like the Bok can do without Pieter-Steph du Toit (they can’t, but Mostert makes it seem almost possible).

LIONS PLAYER OF THE SERIES

The Boks won the series because they managed to negate the potential impact of Maro Itoje in the second and third tests. The England lock was the outstanding player on the field in the second half of the first test, and as that was the only test they won, he has to win the award. Like Mostert, Courtney Lawes was also immense and looks at home on the blindside flank. Without him, the Lions would have been a lot further away from fronting the Boks physically than they were.

THE REAL HEROES

This has to go to all those who worked so tirelessly to make a complete series possible in the most trying of circumstances.