Wales rout a warning Lions face tough tour
NO SOONER had his side given Wales six of the best than Chiefs head coach Dave Rennie turned his thoughts to the next big international assignment – tackling the Lions.
The 2017 tourists will meet all five Super Rugby franchises in their 10-match tour, as well as playing three Tests against the All Blacks and facing the New Zealand Barbarians and Maori – the toughest tour they have faced in the professional era.
And Rennie and his Super Rugby counterparts look to have enough strength in depth to test the Lions in midweek in a way they haven’t been on the past two tours to Australia and South Africa.
The Chiefs went into last week’s clash with Wales without their eight All Blacks, missing two other players away on intentional duty and a further 10 due to injury.
Even so, they conjured up an aggressive, intense, pacy and skilful game plan that saw them outscore Wales by six tries to one in a 40-7 win.
Rennie said: “The game against Wales was a brilliant warm-up for the Lions game next year. It’s pretty cool that we get two international games in succession.
“It depends on how early we get them in the tour as to if we get any of our All Blacks. But we always tend to talk about who we’ve got rather than who we haven’t.
“We picked what was our best available squad against Wales and the boys were really enthused about it. It was incredibly special and I was very proud of them.
“We knew we were minus some of players, but there were some young fellas who wanted to stake a claim. We knew we weren’t going to have our All Blacks available right from the moment they named their squad.”
One man who did make the most of his opportunity was 2011 World Cup hero Stephen Donald. In his first start for the Chiefs in five years he received a standing ovation for the way he ran the show and guided his home town team to another famous win over the Welsh.
With experience like that at his fingertips, and plenty of strength in depth, Rennie will be happy to throw down the gauntlet to the Lions next summer and be confident his side will be competitive.
“It sounds as though they will bring a massive squad and the talk is they’ll come with 40 management. So I don’t know how many players that means,” said Rennie.
“Everything is very personal when you play an international side. Historically, when the Al Blacks went to South Africa or France they played combined teams who just wanted to beat the hell out of them.
“That made it difficult for them at Test time. But our focus will be on working out a way to win the game and play with the style of footy we want to play. I don’t think the All Blacks will be asking us to do anything differently.
“They are very special occasions because these day international sides just tend to play each other on Saturday nights. The game against Wales was a big community occasion and the crowd turned out in force.”