Ian McGeechan plotting a Lions comeback

Right then. Crunch time. Do or Die. Must Win. Whatever you want to call it.

This is the situation that the Lions face now. Having lost the first test (I’ll come to that in a minute) the Lions know that a loss in the second test will mean that everything they have worked towards for the last few months will be for nothing. All the promise shown and the undefeated mid-week record will count for nothing. It’s all about this game. And I genuinely believe we have a real chance to snatch this. And indeed the series. First, lets begin with last week.

It’s really disappointing that we lost. And we lost it in 2 key areas. Firstly, the forwards. In the build up to this series, it was always believed that the South African threat would be at it’s greatest in the front line. It is for this exact reason that certain selections were made. It’s part of the reason why O’Connell was selected as captain. Yet, in the first test, our forwards were utterly dominated by the SA pack, and that ultimately laid the foundation for the SA win. We can argue until we’re blue in the face about the referring in the scrum, and I don’t know enough about scrummaging to tell you what is right or wrong. But I do know that we were ‘owned’ in that area. In my view, Vickery was pulled off a little late. By the time Adam Jones appeared, the damage had been done. It’s a shame Sheridan wasn’t available. I think the changes that have been made for the second test are right on the money. The inclusion of Shaw, will add some of the weight and grunt to the pack that was missing last week. And hopefully, Jones will fair better against The Beast. As the Saffers have the best line out in the world, you know that they will always steal a couple of line outs from you anyway, so at hooker, Rees’ scrummaging ability was a better bet then Mears’ line out accuracy.
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The Windies beat England via the D/L Method

First off a few apologies for my tardiness, I haven’t managed to write in a week or so, and as a result, I seem to have missed out on a few developments in the sporting world. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to give my thoughts on a few of them.

Cricket: T20 World Cup

The world’s fascination with cricket’s most explosive format has been underway in England for about a week now and has certainly thrown up some surprises. I was less than amused to be awoken last Saturday morning by a friend of mine (who is really Australian, but likes to be Dutch when it suits) who tried to goad me about the fact that England lost a World Cup game to Holland. Naturally, I assumed he was talking about football, and found myself correcting him, England didn’t play till Saturday night, and we were playing Kazakhstan.

Oh but yeah….the cricket. That embarrassing result aside, I thought England did well to go on and beat Pakistan and qualify for the Super-8’s. A fact that seemed to escape a few of my other Australian colleagues who tried to remind me that England lost to Holland.

Hang on! Did Australia qualify for the Super 8?

Shut up then.
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Mike Blair

Scotland captain Mike Blair has been added to the Lions squad today to replace the injured Tomas O’Leary. It was an obvious choice really (and one I predicted earlier, ahem ahem), and he will provide excellent competition to Phillips and Ellis for the test number 9 shirt. He is certainly a standout player for Scotland, and I was surprised when he wasn’t included in the original party.

A replacement is also soon to be announced for the injured Tom Shanklin, with Gordon D’Arcy and Mike Tindall among the favorites to be named. As I’ve said before, with Lions squads you always have to think about the teams within a team, and for this reason I would favour Gordon D’Arcy (to partner Brian O’Driscoll).

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Paul O'Connell

I’m really looking forward to this Lions tour now. Almost as much as I relished the start of the tour in 1997. Perhaps thats a good omen? For some reason I didn’t care much about the tours in between.

So we have our squad, some I got right, some I didn’t, but as I predicted, there were certainly some surprises, the major ones being the inclusion of Alan Quinlan, Tomas O’Leary, Simon Shaw and Keith Earls.

Inevitably, there were a few shoe ins that missed out. Ryan Jones being one. For a player who was touted as a potential Lions skipper, this was a great surprise. There was no place also for Delon Armitage, whose ability to play across the backs, coupled with some excellent form in the 6 Nations would have made him an excellent tourist.

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Phil's Lions Squad

Twelve months ago, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this years Lions tour. South Africa were recent World Champions, and the Northern Hemisphere sides were all looking average at best. It was looking likely that the Lions would struggle to make an impact in any of the tests, and would even be lucky to win some mid week games against strong provincial sides.

Wind the clock forward though and things now look a lot rosier. I am now of the belief that this Lions tour could turn out to be very exciting indeed. With the six nations turning out to be one of the more hotly contested competitions in recent years, coupled with a few individuals really raising their game, there are a certain amount of selection headaches for the Lions coach.

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Ireland win The Grand Slam

It’s been a while. 61 years in fact. In 1948 the world was still recovering from war when Jack Kyle masterminded Ireland’s last Grand Slam. We English football fans can begin to understand what that feels like, seeing as it’s been 43 years since we won the football World Cup. But there’s a key difference, 43 is definitely not 61. I thought they’d blown it. As we were watching the Golden Generation of Irish rugby players start to age, I honestly thought they’d missed their chance, and it could well have been another 61 years before it came around again.

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