A FAST START WILL BE KEY
Lions looking for fast start to lay down a marker in tour opener
PUBLIC lateness is fast becoming a trend of Warren Gatland’s Lions. Both media sessions last week in Ireland began way after their scheduled time and the pattern has continued in New Zealand, Gatland and his skipper Sam Warburton unashamedly 47 minutes late to yesterday’s session at North Harbour Stadium in Albany.
The hope is that this unpunctuality isn’t reflective of the way the 2017 Lions is being internally run and that a fast start can be harnessed tomorrow when the eagerly awaited 10-match schedule finally gets underway.
In keeping with previous tours (not since 1971 have the Lions lost an opener), a tiddler of a contest awaits. The NZPB are a ragball bunch thrown together for the one-off shot of a lifetime and while their enthusiasm may conjure a few moments to savour due to the rustiness of the tourists, tomorrow’s curtain-raiser is effectively a fixture where the Lions’ only focus is on themselves and not on any imagined threat a scratch opposition might pose.
Gatland has said it won’t bother him if his squad arrives into the start of the Test series having lost a couple of their half-dozen warmups, but an opening day defeat would be unthinkable, inflicting untold damage on the Lions in their quest to earn the respect of a host country that appears not to know a whole lot about their visitors.
The findings of a local poll — allegedly 78 per cent of New Zealanders can’t recognise one single player in Gatland’s 41-strong squad — were mischievously put to the coach at the Albany Stadium to see if could it elicit one of his famed verbal bombs in reply. But he was wise to the ruse, quipping that if his tour party departs in July having reduced that figure to 77 the trip can be deemed a success.
Verbal sparring isn’t something he is keen on getting into, certainly not with three weeks still to go before the main business of the Test series gets underway. Instead Ps and Qs will continue to be minded for fear of needlessly giving the forever prickly locals a cause at a time when the sole target is to finally get started an adventure that has been 12 years in the making.
‘You have got to be very careful about what you say,’ he admitted. ‘As a Kiwi, if you’re critical of New Zealand, how isolated we are, you get absolutely smashed, so you keep your mouth shut.
‘If we leave the tour and they [his players] have made an impression, that would be pretty positive. I’m not sure a lot of people in New Zealand watch the PRO12, the Aviva (Premiership) or even the Six Nations. As a result, you don’t know too many of the players. But there will be a lot of people in the northern hemisphere who think Dan Carter still plays for the All Blacks.’
Gatland opens with a curious XV, with the entire 23 originally, prior to Jared Payne’s late cry-off, made up of players who managed to get along to pre-departure training and weren’t tied up elsewhere by last weekend’s club finals. Ben Te’o’s positioning at 12 will be interesting, management professing the usual No13 club player has creative subtleties not widely recognised. Kyle Sinckler’s start can also be filed in the experimental drawer as none of his eight England caps has been as a starter.
However, if the previous two tours Gatland was involved in are a gauge, at least five Test series starters are on view, a contingent surely headed by Warburton — even though this is his first match since injuring his knee at Ulster in early April.
The coach can’t wait for the first whistle to blow, hoping it’s the precursor for something magical to materialise when the serious business against the All Blacks begins. ‘I’m hugely excited. I know everyone has written us off (for the Test series) and that’s a nice position to be in. I’ve been really impressed with the players, the other coaches in terms of their input and the preparation of the squad. We’re in a nice place.
‘The hardest thing will sometimes be finalising the top combinations for some games and leaving out some real quality players. I’m sure a lot of us are going to disagree over who should be picked and who should be starting in certain positions because hopefully we do have a lot of choice. A lot of players have been putting their hands up. ‘We have got some players who aren’t known here (in New Zealand), but they have got some X-factor and hopefully they can cause some surprises if we get some hard surfaces. We have got some pace, have footwork and have ability in some positions to cause some surprises.
‘That was a bit of the message Thursday. I honestly feel we have got some players with some Xfactor and to match the All Blacks, it just comes down to one or two magical moments. That might just be an off-load or someone does something special.
‘We have got to give our players the confidence to do the same thing, the freedom to go out there and be able to express themselves. I said to the players this morning, “If we have got a fouron-two on our goal-line, then the decision to me is that you’ve got to move the ball and do something. I don’t want you to play by numbers, I want you to play what is in front of you”.
‘I want them to express themselves, starting straight away in this (NZPB) game.’