'FUCK ...'

THE 2025 LIONS' TOUR OF AUSTRALIA

SOME MATCH, SOME DENOUEMENT; HEARTBREAK FOR A GALLANT AUSTRALIA BUT A HEART-STOPPING, SERIES-CLINCHING WIN FOR THE INDOMITABLE LIONS.

Lip-reading, so I gather, is a highly-skilled yet inexact art, largely because spoken words have far fewer ‘visemes’ than ‘phonemes’. Apparently, it’s the glottal consonants which bugger things up. So it’s often down to guesswork, where speech-readers are relying heavily on context and the breadth of their own vocabulary. It can take years to become proficient.

But as the camera settled on a fat close up of a glazed Allan Alaalatoa at the final whistle in Melbourne on Saturday night, no such proficiency was required, certainly in terms of context or depth of sporting argot. Distraught Wallabies to his right, cavorting Lions to his left, Alaalatoa summed up Australia’s night in one forthright yet unmistakable viseme. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Fuck’, indeed.

Yet here was glorious proof that one-word, post-match soundbites, even if you can’t actually hear them or repeat them in polite company, can sum up eighty minutes of huff, puff and heartache just as eloquently as two minutes hyperventilating into a microphone. Truly, you felt for the guy and for his team. Inches from the summit of the very last mountain of an exhilarating, interminable étape of rugby, the balls-out, all-day, full-gas, green and gold breakaway had been hauled in by a red peloton on a big ring and by nothing more than the width of a wheel. It was hard to see how the Wallabies could’ve pedalled any harder.

Yet while they didn’t win, it was still a victory of sorts. True, they rolled up to the MCG twenty minutes’ late - infernal traffic and clanking trams; it’s always easier to walk in Melbourne - but, out on the turf, they turned up in spades from minute one, offering heart, soul and, more prosaically, heft and craft which threatened to blitz the Lions clean off the paddock in the first thirty minutes, be it hard off nine, or counter-attacking with flair and panache. They were unrecognisable from the imposters of the previous week in Brisbane.

And in so doing, they not only rediscovered themselves and reinvigorated Australia’s rugby reputation but they forced the Lions to scrape the very bottom of their bucket to come up with the nutsy-est of wins. Indeed, in a sense, the Wallabies saved the series and, who knows, perhaps series’ to come. Maybe now, we’ll hear slightly less about them being replaced in future Lions’ schedules by France or Argentina.

But it was some match. From the stunning, aerial shots, the MCG was a boiling saucepan; the game itself a furious, frantic, end-to-end grapple, littered with errors yet lit up by moments of collective and individual class. Skelton and Valetini, Itoje and Bierne; Sua’ali'i and Wright, Gibson-Park and Keenan. Australia took the first thirty minutes 23-5; the Lions the last fifty 3-24. But what the numbers all added up to was a stunning, full-bore Test Match.

Certainly, Hugo Keenan will never again need to reach into his pocket for a pint of Guinness anywhere in Britain and Ireland. But had his footwork not been quite so fabulous, you suspect his Head Coach, Andy Farrell, would’ve had his balls for breakfast. ‘I was screaming, Hugo, pass it, pass it,’ said Farrell afterwards. ‘But he was never going to pass it, was he? What a finish. It was fairytale stuff.’ Asked what got the Lions into the winners’ enclosure by a short head, Keenan himself said; ‘the character, the grit and the determination’. And, no question, his team were a bundle of all three.

But, even then, the drama wasn’t over. We’d heard nothing from TMO, Eric Gauzins, all night long - a blessed relief in itself - but he and referee, Andrea Piardi, wanted to take a forensic squint at Jac Morgan’s last ruck clear-out on Carlo Tizzano. Piardi seemed in no doubt. ‘Both of the players arrive at the same time,’ he said. ‘The player … [Morgan] … is wrapping, we don’t see any foul play. Try stands.’ Cue pandemonium in the Lions’ coaching box - where there appeared to be a touch of the Alaalatoa about Andy Farrell’s immediate reaction - but, no question, gnashing teeth in the Wallabies camp. Pissed off doesn’t even begin to sum it up.

‘That’s a tough one to take,’ Head Coach, Joe Schmidt told Sky Sports. ‘The players are gutted, they’re angry.’ Inexplicably, he wasn’t asked to elaborate but he did so in the post-match media conference. ‘Players make errors, match officials make errors,’ seethed Schmidt. ‘You only have to look at Law 9.20. A player dives off his feet, beaten to the position and makes head contact … there’s no bind with the left arm, the hand’s on the ground. We felt it was a decision that doesn’t live up to the player safety push they’re … [World Rugby] … talking about.’

Unsurprisingly, it was a moment that divided opinion strictly along party lines. ‘There’s a penalty there,’ said Wallaby legend, Michael Hooper. ‘Whether it’s on head, on neck or going straight off his feet to the ground … if that’s minute one, that’s a penalty’. Andy Farrell saw it differently. ‘I thought it was a brilliant clear-out, honestly,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t understand what they were going back for. They seem to go back for everything these days. But I’m so pleased that the referee held his nerve. It was the right decision.’

So, was it? Morgan appeared to whack Tizzano on the back of his neck. Technically, according to the aforementioned Law 9.20, that’s a penalty; ‘above the shoulders’ being illegal. He also ended up off his feet. But, stone me, it was marginal. And given Tizzano had come in from the side in the first place and had his head below the level of his hips, then the Lions could plausibly claim it should’ve been their penalty. The Australian going down clutching his pearls, arguably, didn’t help his cause either. To be frank, that was piss-poor.

Look, we’ve all seen those given both one way and the other. Hooper’s clear implication was that the referee bottled it - ‘if that’s minute one, it’s a penalty’. The Lions might well argue the exact opposite; namely, if that were minute one, we wouldn’t even be discussing it. But, sheesh, it could so easily have gone the other way. As Jac Morgan himself confessed afterwards: ‘I was a bit nervous there, I won’t lie.’

But in the end, the Lions gutsed it out. Even they may not quite understand how. Certainly, it was an imprecise performance. JG-P hoofed a box-kick out on the full, for heaven’s sake; Finn Russell threw a miss-pass to the touch judge. Both were collectors’ items. But, galvanised by the indomitable Maro Itoje, the Lions, somehow, drove their three-wheeled truck over the line in what was their biggest Test comeback in history. Folklore has yet another chapter.

Certainly, the Head Coach was effusive about his Player-of-the-Match skipper. ‘He was outstanding,’ he said. ‘As the game started to unfold in front of us, he was calm and understood what was needed. How he communicated with the referee was absolutely spot on. If you listened back to it, you’d recognise what a class act he was.’

But Farrell himself deserves huge credit. The heart-warming, human scenes post the final whistle - family, children, parents, the non-playing players looking as wildly infantile as the kids - was an environment he created. And, arguably, it was this ‘band of brothers’ ethos that brought the Lions back from the brink. Andrew Porter burying his hairy head in Itoje’s bosum at the final whistle, his arms wrapped tight around his back, was an image I, for one, will long remember, that and Henry Pollock and Bundee Aki - chalk and cheese - wrapped up together like newly-weds. And Farrell and his back-room team deserve every credit for fostering that indelible sense of togetherness.

Right from the start, the Head Coach trusted to character and it paid him back in spades when his team went 23-5 down. As Ronan O’Gara put it afterwards, 'minutes 30-40 were crucial’ and when you sneak a game where - ROG again - ‘Australia were probably the better team on the night’, you’re looking at the tangible effect of the intangibles. It’s what the Lions are all about.

But even without hitting all their straps, Farrell’s team embraced their credo - verve, ambition, free-flowing rugby - one of the many, many reasons this sport so loves the Lions’ concept. They scored five tries in a Test match and, ageing featherbrain that I am, I’m struggling to remember the last time they did that. It sure trumps the two catch-and-drives they scored in three Tests in 2021.

So, if the Lions sober up in time, bring on Sydney. But if there’s a reason this win - this series’ win - feels so special, then part of that is down to Australia. Beating a bunch of effete, no-hopers would’ve felt meaningless. But edging past a team - in the eightieth minute, no less - who gave every bean in their bag genuinely feels like a colossal achievement. A heartfelt hat tip to both teams. It was some game.