1st test - nuff said.....

Ok the fluff is out the way. The wheat has been cut from the chaff, the……the…….thing…..you know..the thing has been separated from the….um……..stuff and something something something. What I am trying to say is that this Saturday is the beginning of the real thing or as people from some parts of the Amman valley say – the full shumonkee.

Above: FIGHT!

Play has been great so far not withstanding the last game which was shit. However they only lost by 2 with some of a team that had had about 24 hours together to gel – even less time then a Barbarian side or of someone who has turned up with his boots and asked to make up a 14^th man for the away team. Kudos must go to Rory Best who was almost Welshman-like in his lineout throwing. Some people thought it was a joke to call up retired diminutive wizard Shane Williams, I didn’t, I loved it and it got people talking about the Lions. We had a lot of comments before the tour that Barrett and Twelvetrees were unlucky not to be going from the start and we can’t judge them on that performance and I think that the dirt trackers will need them, hell knowing Twelvetrees he’ll possibly looking for a test spot by the third. There were players pushing for test spots like Falatau and some from the bench that really should have calmed things down and showed some leadership but in the end its time to shrug shoulders and prepare for the main test.

 

Test side was picked in the early hours of this morning and I think that the only shocks were in the front row where Youngs replaced Hibbard and Vunipola was ousted by Corbisiero. People have been touting the Heaslip, Croft and Warburton partnership for a while now but if they had have chosen a back row consisting of O Brien, Falatau, Lydiate or Tipiric would we have been too gutted? The worry here is that Heaslip and Croft are great players but they aren’t the best at contesting the breakdown and we can’t just rely on Warburton for this – scared? Yeah I am a bit.

Above: Poor Cuthbert was so out of position during this move in training that they found him on the team bus

 

Cuthbert is the biggest concern even though he is one of the most dangerous attacking players on the planet. I can imagine that there will be people in the stadium selling beer and burgers with a finer defending ability. If he is targeted and targeted well, we should be in for a lot of trouble but thank Thor’s love eggs that we have someone great on the bench to come on and……what? Maitland? Eh? I don’t know, while of course the guy is talented and he does play wing and fullback but a Lions cap…….?

Other than Harold Bishop doing something with Charlene and Mrs Mangells dog the story coming out of the Aussie camp is new players especially Israel Foloa who seems to have found his way into the Wallabies side via Aussie Rules and that other rugby game which is played within an 8 mile radius in the north and of course down in Australia. The Aussies will be up for this, exciting fast pack with class backs – they even have the uber talented but uglier rugby player than Wayne Proctor and Mike Tindall, Kurtley Beale on the bench.

Above: Kurtley Beale turns up for training today

I remember the first Lions game I ever saw was the first test against the Australians in 1989 in a house in Goodwick, it was a strange sensation cheering on people like Moore, Richards, Underwood and Andrew, people I had wanted unfortunate minor accidents to happen to in previous seasons, playing alongside players I loved like Robert Jones and Ieuan Evans (I don’t want to talk about Mike Hall….). The result was a bumming of almost Elton John proportions but the Lions team came back, fought tooth and nail and made history. It is up to this Lions team to decide where they will be entered in the annals of rugby history but we know they have the talent to be the first team to win a Lions series in Australia for twenty four years and the first one to win a series against any team since 1997.