FIRE ... AND RAIN
THE 2025 LIONS' TOUR OF AUSTRALIA
NOT THE FINALE THE BRITISH AND IRISH LIONS WERE LOOKING FOR AS THE WALLABIES BROUGHT AN UNQUENCHABLE FIRE AMID THE TEEMING, SYDNEY RAIN. SO WHERE DOES ALL THIS LEAVE THE 2025 LIONS’ LEGACY?
The cake, yes; but no icing. And, if we’re being brutally honest, the cake was snaffled by little more than a single crumb given the overall scoreline in the three Tests was 67-68. Numbers, of course, don’t always tell the whole story but the Wallabies led for 66% of the Series and won four of the six halves. Indeed, had Melbourne’s Morgan moment gone the other way, then, let’s face it, Australia could well have been the ones waltzing away with ‘Tom Richards’ in their Tucker bag.
No question, in the apocalyptic rain of Sydney, the horsemen were all Wallabies and, alas for the Lions, there were more than just four of them. Taking their cue from Nic White’s bristling moustache, they tore into the Lions and wreaked utter havoc; feisty, ferocious, they bossed the gain-line, the aerials, the scrum, the breakdown and reduced the Lions’ line-out to shards and splinters. Let’s not mince words here, it was a stuffing.
In many ways, it was a 36-year throwback but in reverse; the Battle of Ballymore, only without The Biff. Nic White - in his final Test outing - needled, niggled, chirped and picked fights with anyone on his immediate radar. He was a complete pain in the arse: you can pay him no higher compliment. Will Skelton was a colossal, indomitable playground bully; Joseph Sua’ali’i sledged every Lion within earshot in words of very few syllables. Militant doesn’t even begin to describe it, this from a team who, post Brisbane, Clive Woodward accused of having ‘a losing mentality’.
Yet in amongst all the deliciously arsey, ‘Aussie’ attitude, there were shafts of brilliance, too. The Wallaby handling in the tireless, pissing rain was just sublime, their line-out defence was almost psychic and their options - through the hand or the hoof - were spot on. ‘Tactically, we’re in control’, said James O’Connor during the lengthy, lightning break. And they absolutely were.
And to put all this in context, this was a team that was flat out on the floor post Melbourne. Rob Valentini, Allan Alaalatoa and Harry Potter were write-offs, so too Jake Gordon and, in Friday’s captain’s run, they lost two hookers. Yet in Sydney, with the Lions chasing their ‘legacy’, the Wallabies turned in about as Wallaby a performance as we’ve seen in many a long year. They were simply stupendous.
All of which begs the question, where the buggery-bollocks was all this a fortnight ago? Indisputably, they came into this series hopelessly undercooked yet, the longer they were under the grill, the crisper they got. But then, Nic White didn’t appear until the series was lost; so too Taniela Tupou and Dylan Pietsch. ‘The Wallabies will be kicking themselves,’ said Shane Horgan on Saturday night.
But will they? Because this was the Australian Head Coach, Joe Schmidt, talking to Sky Sports before - before - the game on Saturday and I’m quoting him, in full here, word for word. ‘For us, it was never about the series,’ he said. ‘It was always about trying to build our way forward from where we were last year. I think it’s such a big event - a Lions’ tour - if you start thinking about the magnitude of that, you start getting distracted from those little bits and pieces you need to get right, so we just try to keep improving on those to take into the Rugby Championship.’
‘For us, it was never about the series’? Excuse me? So, what, the Lions were just a hit-out for the green and gold to get their ducks in a row ahead of South Africa? Look, if that was what it was all about, then Schmidt succeeded in spades. But if we take him at his word, then the Lions won a series where they were just an Australian appetiser. So, parking the merits of all this from a Wallaby perspective, where does this leave the Lions and does it devalue the currency of their Series’ win? Certainly, there are questions to be asked.
‘All along, we’ve said we wanted to win every game,’ said Lions’ Head Coach, Andy Farrell. But they didn’t; their tour bookended by two poor - almost abject - defeats. The 3-0 chat - ‘we want to chase down the performance we have been searching for’, said skipper, Maro Itoje - was washed away in the pitiless rain and by the equally relentless Wallabies. So, by these metrics, was the tour a failure?
No question, the Lions saved their worst for last, embarrassingly so, given they’d taken a blood oath to bring their very best. In fact, as the Wallabies grew into the series, the Lions faded; dominant in Brisbane, almost desperate in Melbourne and utterly demolished in Sydney. It was sobering.
Should Andy Farrell have recharged his squad for the final game? Unquestionably. A tired team - you suspect mentally as much as physically - needed a fresh, forensic transfusion. It didn’t get it, all of which fuels the argument that the Test XXIII was on train tracks from the moment the tour left the station. It felt as though it was harder to play your way out of the Series than it was to play yourself in.
Let’s be honest here, the Lions were hit and miss for much of the tour; at times, imperious, at other times, disjointed, hence the burning desire ahead of the Third Test - to re-quote Maro Itoje - ‘to chase down the performance we’ve been searching for.’ The yearning frustration will be that they never quite hit the high notes when it mattered. In patches, yes; across the piece, no.
Yet the one game in which they did string together a coherent, 80-minute performance was in Adelaide the week before the First Test, when they walloped an AU/NZ Invitational side 0-48. But of that starting XV, only Keenan, Jones, Tuipulotu and Bierne started a Test. Bear in mind, too, that Keenan was proving his fitness, Jones was behind Ringrose in the pecking order, Tuipulotu featured just once and Bierne was the captain on the night.
Look, the records will show that the Lions won a hard-fought series. As Andy Farrell put it in the aftermath; ‘The legacy for us is in the changing room. The togetherness - it's been an absolute delight.’ And no question, there’s more to a Lions’ Tour, whether you’re a player or a spectator, than what the scoreboard says at the final whistle. Forty-plus guys, not forgetting the - doubtless - exhausted backroom staff will head home with memories and friendships that’ll last a life-time.
But aside from the compelling, unforgettable Second Test in magnificent Melbourne, it was a series - a tour - which never quite caught light. What it perhaps proved, if it needed proving, was that for all the tactical minutiae of the game, raw emotion and desire is where you start. And while these Lions - to their credit - have written yet another chapter in their illustrious history amid a drizzle of ticker-tape, it was, without doubt, the Wallabies who had the last word.
