The Lions reacted to last week’s loss against Argentina by seeing Western Force off winning 54-7. The Lions will be pleased in particular with the second half after giving up a number of penalties that resulted in Henry Pollock seeing yellow on the stroke of half time.
The scrum was under pressure in that opening 40 and will be looked at by John Fogarty and his colleagues. Discipline was an issue and given the way that Ben O Keeffe set the tone in terms of the way he was looking at the break down and the offside line. It will certainly be something that the Lions will be looking at heading to play the Reds on Wednesday morning 11am kick off.
They scored a well created early try that certainly came from the Irish play book and was created by Finn Russell with Dan Sheehan and James Lowe providing the width and finishing power.
Tomos Williams will be sorely missed if his injury is serious enough to rule him out of part or all of the tour. He played with tempo and looked at home alongside Finn Russell. The forwards will need to learn quickly how certain aspects will be refereed within each game, Pollock and Beirne were both caught out for leaving a hand in for a second or two longer than necessary and will need to learn quickly if they are not to fall foul of it again.
The re start is another area of concern but given the quality of player in the squad you have to feel that the players will see that themselves and look to sort it out asap. The replacements in particular up front came on and made a real impact when asked to do so by Farrell and his coaches.
Already, the likes of Elliott Daly, Russell, Lowe and Hansen look to have that telepathy that will only improve as the tour goes on. Tuipulotu and Ringrose dovetailed well in attack but will need to iron out a few rough edges in defence. There were too many missed tackles that will have concerned Simon Easterby and Farrell.
The Lions look to be employing the Irish defensive system at the moment and will hopefully add layers to it as the weeks go on heading for Test 1 on July 19th. The Force will be happy with their opening 40 where they pushed the envelope on a few occasions and pushed the Lions into making a few errors that they only unfortunately managed to capitalise on once in the game despite having more possession and territory in the first half.
For a first outing in Australia, the Lions will be pleased they manged to score as many tries as they did and got a good work out at scrum time as well as being tested in the line out. Dan Sheehan can look back as his Lions debut fondly, a try and a win to mark it as well as solid if not spectacular work in the scrum.
The impact off the bench will have pleased Farrell. Interesting to see when it comes to team selection for the Reds game who will sit it out and who will be asked to back up from today. Tadgh Beirne will be rested now having played last week and this week. Ollie Chessum and Itoje could be picked together with Cowen Dickie starting at hooker for the Reds game just to see does that combination work as well as others have done in the first two games.
Andy Farrell will be pleased to have won on Australian soil in game 1 but will know they will need to shape up in defence and the work at set piece will need to go from strength to strength….
I will now select my 23 to play the Reds next Wednesday at 11am, a number of these guys may still be ruled out with knocks…
15 Marcus Smith
14 Duhan Van Der Merwe
13 Huw Jones
12 Bundee Aki
11 Tommy Freeman
10 Fin Smith
9 Jamison Gibson Park
8 Ben Earl
7 Tom Curry
6 Jac Morgan
5 Ollie Chessum
4 Maro Itoje
3 Will Stuart
2 Luke Cowen Dickie
1 Ellis Genge
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16 Dan Sheehan
17 Pierre Schoeman
18 Finlay Bealham
19 James Ryan
20 Jack Conan
21 Alex Mitchell
22 Elliott Daly
23 Hugo Keenan