Lions Maro Itoje and Taulupe Faletau appeal for a try. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Lions Maro Itoje and Taulupe Faletau appeal for a try. Photo / Brett Phibbs
British and Irish Lions 32 NZ Maori 10
In beating the Maori with considerable ease, the Lions took rugby back a few decades in Rotorua but themselves forward a number of significant steps.
They will feel ready for the All Blacks now having established all the keep parts of their game in are good order. They crushed the life out of the Maori. It was like watching someone sit on a balloon, the pressure built and built towards the inevitable pop.
There was no finesse or mystique about it - the Lions rolled up their sleeves in the style of an officious matron dealing with her ward and clinically went about their business.
Functional, direct, confrontational and focused. They were all of those things and while it was a victory for the Lions it maybe not so much a win for rugby. Romantics everywhere would be sobbing into their soup at the relentless grinding nature of it all, but this is how the Lions want to be: this is how they think they can beat the All Blacks. Maybe they will, but they have signalled loud and clear what they will be bringing and they have to hope that their one trick is going to be good enough.
If the Lions have something up their sleeve for the tests, there's a fair chance it won't be anything too thrilling.
Imaginative rugby isn't their bag. Creativity as New Zealanders understand it isn't in their thinking. Isn't in their system. It's just not in any part of their picture.
There was, once again, no desire from the Lions to open the game up with ball in hand. They didn't want to push things wide - partly because they were not so comfortable out there and partly because that was exactly where the Maori wanted them to go.
So instead, with all the surprise factor of a Russian election, the big runners came off the ruck and hit it up. It was bump, recycle, bump recycle.
Lineout ball was mostly driven. Taken well, hidden in the throng and then walked up the field. It got them going forward but in a sort of World War I sort of way - hard fought inches at a time with the potential for casualties always there.
Maori All Blacks players perform the haka. Photo / Alan Gibson
It was trench warfare. None of it unexpected and of course Conor Murray, Johnny Sexton and Leigh Halfpenny pitched in with their aerial bombardment.
When they were out of ideas up the ball went and it was chase, chase, chase.
It was an unquestionably good way to stifle the Maori. It was a great way to put them under pressure, keep them pinned down in areas of the field they didn't want to be.
The Lions scrum was finally doing what it should be doing, too. There was plenty of power coming through and early in the second half, they were in total control there. That's their happy place after all - scrummaging for penalties.
Ben Te'o makes a run for the Lions. Photo / Brett Phibbs
The whole combination worked. The Lions owned the game. They played at their pace, in Maori territory and they were able to extract penalties and keep the scoreboard moving - in multiples of three, but still moving enough to turn the screw and create the platform for the tries to come.
The Maori helped them in the application of pressure, not dealing nearly well enough with the high balls when they rained down.
That would have been a massive frustration for the coaching staff as presumably hours were spent at training getting off the ground, attacking the ball in the air and working counter attack moves as a response.
The frustration would have been deep in fact with most areas of the Maori's game. They never found much cohesion or flow and lost their discipline frayed the longer the game went on.
