Lions Tour 2017: Highlanders tactics similar to All Blacks - Lions coach

Highlanders 1st-five Lima Sopoaga during the Highlanders captains run. Photo / Brett Phibbs

It's difficult to overstate the value to the British and Irish Lions of their win over the Crusaders.

It has vindicated selections and tactics, and made players and coaches feel good about themselves, but a defeat to the Highlanders in Dunedin tonight could undermine all that and leave them open to thinking: 'What will the All Blacks do to us?'.

Defence coach Andy Farrell, keen to keep his team's momentum going after their success in Christchurch on Saturday, has already compared some of the Highlanders' tactics with those of the All Blacks, whom the Lions meet for the first time at Eden Park a week on Saturday.

This Saturday they play the New Zealand Maori in Rotorua, a match like to be test-like in terms of intensity, and three days later they play the Chiefs in Hamilton.

The Lions feel they are building towards that first test so they arrived here in the south on Sunday with moods which matched the fine and warm conditions.

But another loss, after they dropped a game against the Blues in Auckland, could have them with a disposition more akin the weather conditions today - a miserable mix of snow and driving rain which has likely made everyone thankful of the roof over the stadium.

"They kick the ball more than anyone," Farrell said of the southerners. "I watched the Highlanders play the Crusaders right at the start of the season when the Crusaders won the game right at the end like they did a couple of weeks ago.

"The pace that they play with on the back of an attacking kicking game is great to watch, actually.

"We've got to be in control of how we want to play the game and be ready for their break-neck speed. This is the type of test that we want because this is exactly what the All Blacks are good at."

Of the 12-3 win over the Crusaders at AMI Stadium, he said: "It's always nice to win and to win in the manner we did was great."

Which brings us to a pre-tour pact the Lions made which forbade moaning about game schedules, travel schedules, referees, and so on.

"The one thing that we discussed before we left for these shores," Farrell said, "was there would be no bitching and moaning about anything. We get on with it. This is the schedule. We know the schedule. We know the travel... that's what touring's all about. That's what we embrace as a tourist. Preparation is never ideal but it is what it is for us."

A case could be made for saying that head coach Warren Gatland has already broken that.

He arrived back to his native New Zealand full of cheer, but became prickly after only one match - the Lion's scratchy win over the Provincial Barbarians, when he was caught moaning on tape after a press conference about the apparent need to defend his tactics, and there was a hint of it on arrival in Dunedin, too, when asked to explain his team's attacking record on this tour: two tries in three games.

"We're building here," Gatland said. "The team's been together for just over a week. This is the sixth hotel we've been in since we've been in New Zealand."

Gatland appears taken aback by the level of scrutiny on him and his team by the New Zealand rugby public and media, but perhaps forgets that those same standards apply to the All Blacks.

Some of his responses - blaming jetlag, travel, and a lack of combinations - will have been designed to protect his players. But it's probably time for him to become a little more ruthless, like the Lions were at AMI Stadium. As Farrell said, it's time to just get on with it.