British And Irish Lions Rugby Team Selection Has Rattled A Few Experts In South Africa.

June 22, 2009

By system

South Africa coach Peter de Villiers has spoken of his amazement that the skippers of England, Scotland and Wales have been left out of the British Lions squad.

Lions trainer Ian McGeechan chose a 37-man squad but left out Steve Borthwick, Mike Blair and Ryan Jones.

The one issue that surprised me was that the captains of 3 home nations were left out of the squad, de Villiers told BBC Radio 5 Live.

The guys that play under those guys have a high opinion of them.

He added: Those are the guys that can stand up in
British Lions meetings and try to solve small niggles and things that can develop on a long tour like this.

De Villiers also believes that the decision to appoint Ireland 2nd Row Paul O’Connell as Lions captain ahead of regular Ireland leader Brian O’Driscoll could be harmful. Any possibility here that they are trying to make the atmosphere in the camp bitter?

Brian O’Driscoll was the captain of the last Lions team, even though he got injured, and he was the captain of the most successful Six Nations team this year. That’s a second big revelation.

Furthermore, De Villiers was sceptical of McGeechan’s decision to pack his team with physically commanding players who could contest the mighty Springboks.

If McGeechan wishes to sit down and try to match the Boks then I think that is the wrong , he said.

If he wants to say ‘this is our strong point, this is how we want to play the sport, these are the people who can do the job for me’ then I can justify any choice he has made.

But I will not sit down and say ‘they are going to do this, so I should do this’. We am more focused on what We want to do and I will find the genius and the players to do the job for us.

The tour officially began on 30 May with a game against a Highveld XV with the British Lions Tour Tests against the Springboks starting on 20 June.

Irish Star Number 8, Jamie Heaslip prepared for his second outing with the British & Irish Lions Rugby Team against the Sharks on Wednesday night by swimming with the real McCoy. The Leinster and Ireland No 8 went snorkling with metre and a half long sharks in Durban at the weekend to get a savor of things to come later this week. And having enjoyed his first encounter of swimming with the ocean’s most lethal creatures, he is now planning on getting up close and personal with some Great Whites when the tour moves on to Cape Town.

“Shane Horgan told me before I went on tour that there would be plenty of chances to do different things and that I should take them all,” said Heaslip. “I jumped at the chance to go swimming with some sharks when we arrived in Durban and it was great. You get a few seals in Ireland, but certainly not sharks.

“We went down in a cage to begin with and then we were able to swim alongside them. The guides said they were safe, but they told us not to pet them. “Hopefully, in Cape Town we will be able to get into the cage and hang out with some Great Whites. That would be fantastic.”

Before then, though, Heaslip got to run the gauntlet of South African rugby’s own Sharks team. It was his second start on tour and another good game has edged him further ahead of Wales’ Andy Powell for the No 8 position in the Test side.

“Springbok rugby is very power driven and they like to kick the ball. But they are big units, they run straight and they are very aggressive at the breakdown,” he added.

“We have to be more competitive at the breakdown because if we can get fast ball for our backs they can do some real harm.”

The South African Springboks have long been known as one of the most physical – some would say dirty – teams in international rugby. There certainly have been some nasty incidents concerning South African teams over the years, none more so than the 1974 Lions tour when the British Lions famously used their “99 call” to contend with the Springboks’ off-the-ball tactics.

In recent years however, the International Rugby Board has done a first-rate job of cleaning up rugby, assisted by advances in video technology, the sin bin, and the use of citing commissioners to hand out punishment for foul play after the match. Things still happens – rugby is a provoking contact sport after all – but rarely on the scale seen here.

Teams and players are in general a lot more cautious these days – England’s 2002 destruction of the Springboks at Twickenham clearly demonstrated the outcome of a red card early in a match. England would in all probability have won that match anyway, but certainly not by the record score they achieved if the Springboks had not had to play the greater part of the match with 14 men.

Data suggests that even having a player receive a yellow card and being sent to the sin bin for 10 minutes usually results in scores against his team, often from the accompanying penalty, but also from the physical advantage it gives the opposition. More often than not the team with 14 men concede a try in the ten minute period. And even if points aren’t scored within the period of the suspension, it’s likely that the extra energy expended by the rest of the team to cover for the missing player takes a toll later on in the match.

But while we will with a bit of luck not see any punching or blatant foul play during the 2009 British Lions tour, physical domination of the opposition is still a fundamental of the game, and we should expect no quarter to be asked or given by either side. In recent years the Springboks have not often strayed too far from their traditional pattern of play, based on a solid foundation of forward play to get over the gain line and creating space out wide for their classy backs. When they have experimented with playing a more expansive game, they have perpetually come unstuck.

It remains to be seen what tactics the British Lions of 2009 will employ, but they will need to at least match up the Springboks in the scrums, line outs and at the breakdown if they are to control the play. Indeed, the legendary Willie John McBride (captain of the victorious 1974 Lions), has a short time ago gone on record stating that he believes the scrum holds the secret to success for the 2009 British Lions Rugby Team.

Whatever the strategy, expect a brutal physical confrontation, with the team that gains the upper hand standing a good chance of success in the British Lions Test series.

Popularity: 4%

Bookmark Now