The Lions are in a hole of their own making and it might be the crowning achievement of Warren Gatland’s coaching career if he can find a way out on Saturday in the third and decisive Test.
His team were way off the pace in the second Test, suckered into playing the forward-orientated game the Springboks love, at the steady pace they enjoy.
There was no tempo in the game. It lasted for ever — I noted down that the first four minutes of play took 12 minutes of actual time. There was no opportunity to tire out those big Boks forwards and bring endurance rather than brute force into the equation.
Warren Gatland (left) must go for broke and select Finn Russell (right) at fly-half if he is fit
It was a desperately poor second half from the Lions, who looked deflated, flat and confused. In the first Test they stormed out of the tunnel after the break and produced a very high-quality burst of rugby to take the game away from the Boks. This time there was no response.
The Lions, and supporters like me, read too much into that Test. I have to put my hand up on this one. It was a win but the truth is that the Boks were just awful, way off the pace and rusty, and the Lions scarcely better than average.
We probably knew that the Boks would improve 100 per cent but wrongly assumed the Lions would do likewise. They didn’t.
The other big mistake is that we thought the Boks might change their style — forward power, box ballgame, only really attacking in the 22 — because the misleading evidence of the first Test suggested the Lions could match them and even shade it up front.
Lood de Jager gave the Boks an unbeatable lineout to complement their powerful scrum
Wrong. The Boks changed absolutely nothing, they just continued with their normal game plan — except this time they executed it so much better. Don’t expect anything different on Saturday. Expect them to be even better, in fact.
The Boks made one great tactical call in the second half when they dropped
