Chaos is latest order of the day
FORGET ‘Warrenball’. ‘Rugby chaos’ is the jargon tripping off the tongue this week in New Zealand. We’ve yet to see this unstructured approach on the pitch, though, making do instead with it unfolding in the dining room of a busy Christchurch hotel on Thursday evening.
Hard-working waiter staff were trying to feed hungry customers at the same time Lions personnel were throwing quotes out to media in the vicinity. It was a chaotic set-up and into the maelstrom — there were constantly ringing bells from kitchen staff highlighting the meals ready to serve – eventually stepped Peter O’Mahony.
No sooner was he seated than he was flummoxed about hearing that Warren Gatland had been calling on him, via the media, to bring ‘Munster mongrelness’ to the mix when the Lions look to growl against the polished Crusaders. Confused? You bet. ‘Ah, you’re going to have to put that in a better context now. What exactly did he say?’ replied O’Mahony, turning tables on the people who were supposed to be asking him the questions, not the other way around.
‘I’m not exactly sure,’ came the reply from the floor, an uncertainness in keeping with the unfolding sense of chaos. ‘Maybe he is just looking for exactly what you bring to the party, I guess.’
Putting his head down and working hard will come naturally to him. The question is, how far can honest to goodness toil take him in this Lions set-up?
So many of the two entirely different XVs that started the previous two matches have already played themselves out of Test selection contention rather than into it.
O’Mahony’s own form dipped in May but tomorrow would be a prized time to restore it, the tour moving to the south island yesterday to begin its latest leg following a north island mugging by the Blues that not even a 25-minute O’Mahony cameo could prevent.
Dwelling on the defeat? There simply isn’t time. ‘This is very different to anything else in rugby,’ he said. ‘You’d struggle if you are going to get bogged down about Wednesday night.
‘You have got to take your lessons, have got to build on your positives… you have to roll with the punches and just get on with it.
‘It’s a huge honour, an incredible feeling. It comes with a responsibility and a pressure but it’s an incredible feeling and all you want to do now is play well for the group of guys around you and what the Lions stands for.’
Making good on that promise won’t be easy, despite O’Mahony being well-versed in the Kiwi way — Munster previously having a New Zealander at their helm and Ireland currently have one in charge.
Add to the equation how his last match in New Zealand prior to Wednesday’s bench cameo had been a start in that record 0-60 2012 hammering for Ireland in Hamilton and you begin to realise the extent of the challenge this tour presents.
‘Their [New Zealanders’] default is they love playing with the ball and they love playing to attack and they do that from anywhere. I suppose that gives us the lesson that we need to hold the ball.
‘Our defensive systems need to be close on immaculate to defend these guys and they attack from everywhere.
‘We’ve got to be switched on at all times. Lapse of concentration here or there at this level against this calibre of player and you are going to be under the sticks.’ His stop-start season might have left him stretching for form but idleness has its use, priming him for the Lions merry-goround where a player is in one minute and out the next, and vice versa. ‘I have had a bit of experience this year coming back from injury but it is a different animal. You come on tour with 40 of the best players and you understand coming out here you are with the best so there are guys who are going to be left out who aren’t used to being left out. ‘But that is the buy-in, that is part of what being a Lion is, that the guys who aren’t involved preparing the 23, preparing them is a huge part. ‘This is the pinnacle of rugby and across the park it is going to take that little level above international rugby. The players that have been picked are world-class and it’s a question of whether we can go the extra five per cent to beyond that level. ‘It’s a dream come true getting my first starting jersey,’ he remarked. ‘I’m just hoping I will be up to scratch, well prepared and be able to get stuck in.’ Just like those hotel waiters working in the dining room which had been swamped by Lions chaos.
You’d struggle if you let yourself get bogged down