Sam Warburton shares video of amazing scenes from Lake Wakatipu as the Lions took to the water after their second test win over the All Blacks. Footage / Instagram.com - @samwarbs
Rarely have the All Blacks looked as tired near the end of a test as they did against the Lions in Wellington, and the tourists believe they will have the edge again there in the series decider at Eden Park.
The absence of Sonny Bill Williams obviously played a hugepart in that fatigue, the All Blacks forced to cover for him for 55 long minutes at Westpac Stadium, but Lions trainer Paul Stridgeon believes his side are just as fit and, significantly, have just as much depth on the reserves bench.
Stridgeon, who trained the Lions during their series victory over Australia four years ago and their 2-1 defeat to South Africa in 2009, said the two days off his players have enjoyed in Queenstown will prime them nicely to finish over the top of the All Blacks on Saturday.
It is a strategy employed on the previous two tours; in South Africa the team went on a safari, four years ago they went to Noosa. This time they have enjoyed jetboating and various other adrenaline-fuelled pursuits in New Zealand's adventure capital.
Asked whether the All Blacks were traditionally so good in the last quarter of tests because of their superior fitness or clarity of thinking, Stridgeon, a former wrestler who represented Great Britain at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, said: "It's a bit of both. It's obviously mental because they [All Blacks] play tough test matches all the time.
Obviously, you're going to get better at decision making; players under fatigue decision-making at the end of games to come back in games.
"I also think that when they play other countries, because of their strength of depth, when they unload their bench at 60 minutes or 50 minutes, then their bench is generally stronger than the other team's. I think that's where we can possibly match them because we'll have a strong bench as well when the subs come on."
Fitness was key, he said, but the Lions had fit athletes across the park too. "I think we can match them in the last 20 with this team and this group of players.
Stridgeon added: "The [intensity] numbers are higher than we've ever seen but we'd allowed for this and we spoke to the players at the beginning and told them where they needed to be, that this was the level we needed to be at to beat the All Blacks, so we replicated that in training.
"Obviously in the first test we felt we could do better but we think we took the All Blacks to somewhere we wanted to take them... we feel we can do even better this weekend."
The All Blacks probably consider having two weeks off at the start of an extremely important test week a big gamble, but Stridgeon was adamant that it was a proven blueprint for success, pointing to assistant coach Andy Farrell's talk to the Lions after they lost the second test against Australia four years ago.
"On the Monday they all wanted to train again, but he made the point that if they trained on Monday they would have 'played' the game by Friday. We think by giving them a couple of days of mental refreshment they ... will come in hungry on Wednesday."
