Woodward seeks elusive formula

Can Sir Clive Woodward extract a winning formula from the Lions, a feat achieved only once before on a tour of New Zealand?

It will not be for want of manpower, support staff or financial backing on the first Lions visit to this country in the professional age.

However, the restrictions of time will bedevil Woodward and the Lions. They will not have much leeway to bond as a group or to test a wide range of combinations. Nothing changes in that regard for the Lions.

Woodward has done all his planning and organisation, his dossiers on the All Blacks, provincial opponents and his own band of travellers are bulging. Now he and his coaching staff need to get some training ground mileage into the Lions.

This is where the fascination picks up.

Woodward took six years to reach his goal with England, while he had only six weeks from his team announcement to prepare the Lions for their latest venture.

After his ascension to England coach in 1997, Woodward waded through some tough times, including a comprehensive quarter-final defeat at the 1999 World Cup and narrow Grand Slam losses from 1999-2002.

Through it all Woodward managed to keep his job. His "trust me" entreaties continued as he searched for skilful players, a powerhouse pack, the right mix of youth and experience, and a style to suit England.

In mid-2002, Argentina were beaten at home before England, in successive November weekends, were victorious against their three Sanzar opponents. They had started to crack their mental barriers.

The march continued, Woodward and England timed their run perfectly as they beat the All Blacks and Wallabies Down Under as a prelude to their World Cup triumph.

Job done. The pressure-cooker intensity eased and neither the coach nor his side was able to hit the heights again. Together they lost five of their last six internationals and a month after his captain Lawrence Dallaglio retired last August, Woodward resigned.

His sporting future lay with soccer, a code which had been his passion and had absorbed him since his boarding school days.

But there is the small matter of the Lions tour before Woodward can test his talents with Southampton.

Have Woodward's powers diminished in his nine months away from the coaching tiller?

Can he recreate the venom England delivered and how does he manage that in such a short time with his expanded tour party?

How can he produce the attention to detail, the finesse and empathy in the Lions which make the difference between good and first-rate sides?

They are techniques learned and honed from years of practice, like the absolute trust demanded of each other for defensive screens to work. Or the sense of timing to suddenly change a line of attack, moves which require instinct and intuition born from seasoned combinations.

Woodward's answer was to choose England players for half his Lions squad, blokes who had served him strongly and whose games he understood.

He knows them, but there must be questions about whether some of his white-shirted heroes are past their use-by date.

Even Woodward seemed to have come to that conclusion when he jettisoned flanker Neil Back after the World Cup. But 18 months on, Woodward has picked the 36-year-old for the Lions and conceded his earlier selection error.

By picking half the massive squad and any marginal choices from England, there is also a risk for Woodward that unhealthy cliques could develop, especially if the Grand Slam-winning Welshmen feel they have not got a fair run at test time.

However, the Lions coach goes by the mantra espoused by former All Black hooker Warren Gatland, who had such a great run with the Wasps club.

It was critical, Gatland said, that the Lions used players who had experienced the cauldron of New Zealand rugby.

He meant men such as Dallaglio, an unrelenting loose forward who had retired from test rugby but had not dropped his standards.

When Dallaglio last left New Zealand, he was furious in the aftermath of their 2004 series loss to the All Blacks and the red card at Eden Park for lock Simon Shaw.

But the abrasive loose-forward was determined to return ". . . because I think that for various reasons they haven't seen the best of a lot of our players and I would like to make sure they do."

Woodward was aggrieved when Graham Henry was preferred instead of him as Lions coach for the tour to Australia in 2001. He would have been equally pained when Henry's men dealt to his World Cup winners last year.

This is a visit for retribution.

How will Henry counter? He will use most of the men and much of the style the All Blacks delivered with such panache in their 45-6 win in Paris last November.

He will hope that the mid-winter weather is not too brutal, that the All Blacks are able to use a fluid pattern to outmanouevre the heavyweight chokerhold the Lions will seek to apply.

Completing the colour will be the thousands of Lions supporters, those who chose to bypass the last World Cup to watch this 11- game tour. Four years ago they brought a new dimension to the sporting landscape in Australia and this will be no different.