Squad fails to impress the locals WHANGAREI POSTCARD
RESPECT is what the Lions hope they will have earned when its pride of 2017 goes its separate ways on July 8, but they finished the first weekend of their lengthy stay being mocked by their hosts.
It’s all well and good their obvious eagerness to seek out community involvement, to set about winning friends off the pitch by visiting schools, hospitals and more on Friday and then detouring to Waitangi at first light yesterday, the birthplace of New Zealand, an hour north of Whangarei for a morning of Maori pomp and ceremony before jumping on a charter flight back to Auckland.
For sure, it all makes for a colourful photo op — the pupils, the patients and the warriors dressed in very little trying to look intimidating. However, this is a rugby tour and only some on-pitch, claws-bearing inhospitality will genuinely earn these Lions the kudos of those Kiwis left mightily unimpressed by their aimless first show in Toll Stadium.
The Northland locals, who hadn’t Lions on the prowl in their area since 1993, came to be royally entertained by the best of the supposed best from Britain and Ireland, only to wind up ridiculing them, generating boisterous boos, for example, whenever they opted to direct penalties at the posts rather than be inventive.
These supporters were the real heroes of the Whangarei whistle stop, packing out grassy banks which surely would have been closed at a northern hemisphere ground (if they still exist).
Mud, glorious mud, was what was visible on these steep inclines when passing the emptied-out place yesterday, illustrating what spectators went through in the dark the previous night to catch a glimpse of Lions who played like kittens and were unhesitatingly told as much.
Barracked by unimpressed fans as the dreariness unfolded live, the Sunday morning newspapers were especially unforgiving in putting in the boot, headline words such as ‘abject failure’, ‘led-footed’, ‘lame’, ‘dismal’, ‘mediocre’ and ‘toothless’ among the derisory descriptions summing up a display that created a reputation-damaging stink.
It was the Lions who were supposed to be the first-day rugby romantics, their quadrennial endeavours the stuff of legend ‘since 1888’, as the promo goes. Instead, it was the local scratch side that captured the imagination, their ringmaster intriguingly being Warren Gatland’s own son Bryn whose firsthalf aerial teasing was just the thing to generate some chaos and bruise a plethora of visiting egos that might not recover from the ordeal.
The hosts’ have-a-go pluck was inspiring, their basic catch-pass skills typifying how rugby is so well coached down here, further evidence gleaned earlier in the day when attending a first-grade club game at Marist Club where props performed like backs, such was their confident handling.
As for the tame Lions, you must now wonder the potential negative knock-on consequences for the tourists who wanted a fillip but instead were within a six-point whisker of being filleted.
Despite their extraordinarily hyped brand, you can still buy tickets for the opening June 24 Test match, the jewel in the crown fixture of the 10-game itinerary, and the Whangarei evidence wouldn’t have those who adopted a waitand-see approach to spending money now hurriedly stumping up.
The Lions would have awoken bemused at seeing lovely winter sunshine yesterday after two previous days ruined by weather that drenched and sapped the first weekend spirit. Suddenly previously hidden, beautiful Northland scenery came out from behind its grey veneer and positively glowed, nestling in the imagination how sweet a countryside the province must be in a southern hemisphere summer.
That fussy thought, though, was no consolation to a rugby team that left its first winter pit-stop wounded and on the back foot when it should be striding purposefully into week two. The respect they desire only seems further away after Whangarei. OLIVER JAGER, the Dublin-schooled prop, is likely to continue his fledgling professional career in New Zealand rather than Ireland. The 21-year-old Blackrock College graduate (right), who has appeared at Super Rugby level this year with the Crusaders, packed down at tighthead for the Provincial Barbarians on Saturday. He didn’t let himself down, grappling at the scrum with Joe Marler and, briefly, Mako Vunipola and will now hope to get a second shot at the Lions when the Crusaders play them next Saturday. ‘I’m out of contract at the end of this season, but we are working on a new one at the moment,’ he said.