David Leggat: Too much choice and not enough winning glue

Hands up all those who have heard of Gareth Cooper.

The name might be vaguely familiar but it's unlikely you know what he looks like.

Cooper is a 25-year-old from Bridgend in Wales. He likes eating chicken, reading autobiographies and rates There's Something About Mary as his favourite film.

There's no reason you should know that minutiae, but if you're a rugby fan you may know he is a halfback with the Lions.

They have four of them in New Zealand. Cooper, a lively No 9 who has played 25 internationals for Wales, is not in the 22 for tonight's match against Otago.

And that means since he set foot in New Zealand on May 27, Cooper has played precisely three minutes' rugby in five games.

He, and you, are entitled to wonder what on earth he's here for.

And Cooper is a shining example of why this Lions tour is in a parlous state.

On the field, they're playing fairly average rugby, with little spark or cohesion.

Take away a blazing opening 15 minutes in the first game against Bay of Plenty, and try to think of some memorable rugby. It's hard going.

And off the field, they've blundered in the PR stakes, which had seemed an important part of the deal from the start.

No, we won't neglect the community responsibilities, was the message from the top table.

Things started well enough, but now the shutters are down, wagons are circling, the kids in the deep south are disappointed, and they won't be the only ones.

The tourists are being battered by their own media for adopting a siege mentality. If so, it's a state of mind they can blame their bosses for.

It is easy to imagine the players cooped up in their hotels, with those who have figured out by now that they have no place in Sir Clive Woodward's test planning counting the hours until they get home.

I'll bet there are many who'd like to get out and about and see more of the country. As Otago coach Wayne Graham pointed out this week, that's an important part of touring.

The Lions have got themselves in a tangle on and off the field, and there are Catch 22s all around.

There is now a realisation that they are perhaps one game short of being able to work out their best test combinations ahead of next weekend's opening international, of giving those players sufficient time on the park together.

Yet they planned the itinerary, they knew what lay ahead.

And, as if we didn't know a month ago, it's increasingly obvious the Lions have brought too many players.

Everyone had to be given a run in the first four games - even the luckless Mr Cooper.

That meant the selectors couldn't put, for example, Jonny Wilkinson and Dwayne Peel, the probable test halfback combination, together more than once.

Even then, the pair were split after an hour against Wellington to experiment with Wilkinson at second five-eighth outside Peel's fellow Welshman, Stephen Jones.

It also meant they could not experiment with one possible test back trio of Geordan Murphy, Josh Lewsey and Gareth Thomas at all.

Now they have a B team facing Otago tonight. They might have been better to go the whole hog, say sorry to a bunch of the squad and pick their shadow test XV so at least they'd have time running as a unit against serious opposition.

Some of tonight's players will find themselves in the test 22 - certainly Murphy, perhaps Martyn Williams, Lewis Moody, Simon Shaw, Gordon Bulloch and Charlie Hodgson, who has easily been the most impressive of the No 10s so far.

But the Lions are likely to name a test squad on Wednesday which will include several players who haven't had a game in 10 days by the time they run onto Jade Stadium next Saturday.

Working their way out of this muddle will take some doing.