Chris Hewett: O'Driscoll fiasco a real poser

Graham Henry failed to notice it, Keven Mealamu showed no sign of knowing what the heck anyone was talking about, Tana Umaga was positively cryptic - "There were a few incidents out there that will need looking at," he muttered.

Referee Joel Jutge? Not a clue. Andrew Cole, the touch judge, who was standing all of one metre away? Er, nothing to report, boss.

One man felt it, though: Brian O'Driscoll, the only Lions captain in history who spent more time singing the anthems than playing the rugby. And he was not making it up.

Sir Clive Woodward knows what he saw, and thinks he knows what the citing commissioner saw - that is to say, the same piece of tape.

What the coach is struggling to work out is how his eyes are different to those of Mr Willem Venter.

In Woodward's book, the assault on O'Driscoll - a "double spear-tackle", to use his description - was as plain as the nose on the Irish centre's face, or rather the agony etched into it as he was transported from the pitch on a golf cart moving at a suitably funereal pace.

How big a mess is this? Probably not as big as Woodward believes, but comfortably substantial enough to be going on with.

O'Driscoll is profoundly unlucky; only someone with the soul of a breeze-block would fail to sympathise with a high-class sportsman brought to earth, figuratively as well as literally, in such an abrupt and excruciating manner.

But these things happen in rugby. It's a rough old sport, even though the worst excesses of the rucking game have been televised out of existence, and there is a tacit acceptance from those who take the field of play, and reap its rewards, of the implicit risk to life and limb.

Hang on just a moment, though. This incident happened in New Zealand, and New Zealand has not been terribly good at disciplining its own down the years.

Yes, Venter is a South African; as such, he is entirely independent of the competing sides in this series.

Yes, Mealamu and Umaga would have been dealt with by an Australian had it been decided there was a case to answer.

But Woodward can be forgiven for feeling that his touring sides struggle to get a fair crack of the whip in these parts. Ian Jones in 1998? Ali Williams in 2003? These people were as guilty as hell of dodgy footwork on the heads and faces of English players, and walked away without a blemish.

Yesterday, the coach suggested that O'Driscoll's demise damaged the Lions' chances of making some sense of the opening test. He was probably right, in so far as the captain was the one back fit to lace the boots of Carter, Mauger, Umaga and the silver-ferned back three.

The likes of Jonny Wilkinson can play a bit in a limited sense, but in terms of attacking creativity they do not inhabit the same universe as their opponents.

There again, no one with half a brain would seek to pin the Lions' defeat on O'Driscoll's difficulties. We might as well blame the start of World War II on the weather. The tourists were minced and mashed in pretty much every area, most worryingly in the lineout - one of the phases in which they rather fancied themselves. What happened 77 seconds into Saturday night's test may have left a sour taste in the mouth. But do not even begin to lay the Lions' troubles at the foot of this particular mountain of misfortune.

* Chris Hewett is a rugby writer with the Independent in London.