Brian Moore: The Lions will have to get used to fighting until the bitter end

British and Irish Lions captain Sam Warburton in the first tour match between the Lions and the New Zealand Provincial Barbarians. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Opinion

As the Lions prepare to name their team to play the Blues on Wednesday at Eden Park, former English player Brian Moore talks about the lessons learned from the first tour game.

There are genuine reasons that contributed to the poor opening performance of the Lions against the New Zealand Provincial Barbarians.

The tour schedule is suicidal, not just in terms of the difficulty of the games but in having to delay leaving a location and breaking their journey to fulfil sponsorship agreements. Jet lag has not helped either, but nobody connected with the tour party should express any of this openly.

In New Zealand you front up, get on with whatever comes and leave your talking for the pitch. Psychologically, you must avoid giving the Kiwis the upper hand by sounding like whingers. More than one domestic newspaper has already mentioned the sums being paid to each tourist and in Kiwi terms it is a handsome amount. Overpaid, over-hyped and over here is not sort of press the Lions need ahead of the most thorough examination of their careers.

Privately, coach Warren Gatland will know that the opening game of any tour is often poor and this one was no different. The die was cast when the Lions failed to get anywhere near the opening kick-off and immediately boosted the home side's confidence. For much of the first half they were, bar a few notable exceptions such as Kyle Sinckler, Ross Moriarty and Toby Faletau, off the pace.

Gatland highlighted the fact that they were held up over the line several times and wasted at least two other distinct try-scoring chances due to poor handling. More than anything, he will be disappointed that, overall, the Lions did not establish any sort of definable style and could not impose any pattern of play for meaningful periods.

In terms of future selection, the pairing of Greig Laidlaw and Jonathan Sexton did not work and Sam Warburton's return from long-term injury was unremarkable. Ben Te'o does what he does every week to good effect - ran at the inside shoulder of his defender and created space for outside runners. The battle for the inside-centre position is going to be fascinating, particularly if Owen Farrell is deemed to be a No 10 and it becomes a straight fight with Robbie Henshaw.

For two test starters-in-waiting it was less than ideal. Stuart Hogg had a poor first half but partially redeemed himself later with some neat footwork. Sexton looked strangely out of sorts and suffered by comparison with his replacement Farrell, who was sharper and gave the team more direction when he took over.

One area in which the Lions would have expected a decisive advantage against a side of relatively junior players would be the set-piece. They failed to achieve this and therein lies a wider lesson, one often misunderstood by opponents of New Zealand teams. They are not obsessed with and do not see lineouts and scrums as penalty opportunities and thus do not make a feature of them. This does not mean they are weak in this area, it is just that completing scrums and scoring tries from them is not a novel concept. Anyone who thinks dominating a Kiwi side in the set- piece will win a game is likely to be disappointed.

There are lessons to be learnt from Saturday. Chief among them is this - if you allow any New Zealand team to get beyond the first tackle, they are expert at creating ever faster possession from breakdowns. Call it going through the gears, they flood into good support positions and commit enough men to make the breakdown ball quicker and defending harder. The Barbarians demonstrated this and the Super Rugby sides will be better by a considerable margin, especially as the international players have been released for the Lions' next two games against the Blues and the Crusaders this week.

- This story was first published in the Daily Telegraph