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When they reflect on their night’s work in Canberra the British & Irish Lions will once again have mixed emotions. At their best the touring team look sharp and dangerous but, with the Test series fast approaching, they are still not firing on all cylinders in some key areas. A first-half injury to full-back Blair Kinghorn has also come at a delicate moment ahead of the first Test in Brisbane on Saturday week.
Fielding close to their best starting XV, the Lions finished up scoring five tries with Ollie Chessum, James Lowe and Marcus Smith crossing in the first and Garry Ringrose and Josh van der Flier following suit in the second. The in-form Finn Russell also contributed 11 points with the boot to cap another assured performance.
Up in the stand, even so, the watching Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt will not have been totally disheartened. He will been suitably impressed by Russell’s composure and all-round accuracy and Maro Itoje’s authority but, equally, the Brumbies scored four tries of their own and at no stage did the Lions run riot. Schmidt will privately feel the touring team are not absolutely unbeatable.
The Lions were given problems to solve from the outset. Less than four minutes had elapsed when a prolonged series of low-slung charges ended with Tuaina Taii Tualima taking the aerial route to the line. With Kinghorn also tweaking an ankle which subsequently forced him off inside the first 25 minutes and Bundee Aki throwing an attempted pass straight into touch, things were not going entirely to plan.
Quite how many Australian households were tuning in to assess the touring team was another matter. An unfortunate clash of dates meant this fixture clashed with rugby league’s State of Origin game three decider in Sydney and the Brumbies were never going to win that one. Australia’s sporting market is increasingly crowded and the Wallabies’ lack of recent success has also not helped union’s cause.
Russell, though is very definitely box office and a lovely little gliding run and deft pass set up Chessum for an equalising try. The Lions are still building a few combinations but there is nothing wrong with their quick-witted half-back pairing.
There was another good example at the start of the second quarter when Russell again carved out some delicious space on the left and Kinghorn’s pass to Lowe looked certain to produce a second try. Somehow, though, the wing failed to touch the ball down as the home full-back Andy Muirhead arrived to tackle him and the chance went begging.
Happily for Lowe he made no mistake in the same left corner after 29 minutes following another slick handling sequence. If only all areas of the Lions game had been so precise; once again their first-half display was a slightly mixed bag, peppered with a couple of frustrating penalties and a few more dropped balls at inconvenient moments.
It all helped to keep the Brumbies in the game and the hosts fully deserved their second try, more purposeful approach work and a long overhead pass giving Corey Toole the chance to narrow the gap. The Lions needed to restore some order and duly did so when Russell and Curry put the lurking Smith away for a beautifully-engineered team score.
Another successful Russell conversion made it a nine-point game at the interval and the margin increased further when Ringrose combined nicely with Smith and successfully chased the latter’s chip ahead. Again, though, the Brumbies underlined their determination to compete with a third try, this time for the replacement Hudson Creighton.
The player the locals had really come to see, however, was Mack Hansen, who played for the Brumbies before choosing to pursue his professional rugby dream in Ireland courtesy of his Cork-born mother. He was just another teenager in the crowd in this equivalent game 12 years ago and was greeted with a few boos on his return.
The overriding memory of this game, though, will be the Lions’ inability to kill off the contest earlier. Van der Flier did add a fifth score but a couple of other possible visiting tries were held up over the line and Liam Bowron added a fourth try for the Brumbies four minutes from time. When the Test series comes around the Lions will need to be significantly more clinical.
