Paul Lewis: Lions lack game-breakers

- Lions - Second Five Eight Ben Te'o from the 2017 British and Irish Lions during the first test against the New Zealand Provincial Barbarians at Toll Stadium. Photo / Greg Bowker.

There is hope for the Lions - but you have to go back to 1973 to find it.

That was when an England team, studded with star players, performed like puddings who had never played rugby before or with each other.

They scraped to a narrow win over Fiji, lost to Taranaki, lost to Wellington, lost to Canterbury before beating the All Blacks 16-10 on Eden Park, still ranked as one of the shock losses in All Black history.

England scored three tries to two, deserved winners over a New Zealand team puzzlingly disorganised and insipid. Complacency, came the cry; there is little doubt it was a factor and could be again when the Lions and All Blacks meet in the first test.

Yeah, but nah.

Modern professionalism should take care of traditional All Black first test rustiness and any complacency. Should.

The 1973 England team also had a quality...what's it called...oh, yes - talent.

Halfback Jan Webster was man of the match, outplaying the great Sid Going. David Duckham and Peter Squires were on the wings and Peter Preece at centre; the forwards included some of the great names of English rugby - Stack Stevens, Andy Ripley, Fran Cotton, John Pullin and flanker Tony Neary, who often saved his best for the All Blacks.

At fullback was a bloke called Peter Rossborough - built like a pencil. We'd never heard of him before this match and we never heard of him afterwards, either; he cut through the All Blacks in open play with pace and step, making them look clumsy.

The 2017 Lions don't seem to have that quality. The Blues defended well this week but there was little threat of a genuinely creative Lions line break.

Attack coach Rob Howley - bet he's not sleeping well - came up with the wholly inadvisable term "rugby chaos" to describe the Lions' intentions of playing with width and invention in the unstructured moments of the game.

More like rugby coma. The Lions were entirely predictable as ball carriers. When they kicked, it was for little profit (unless you count giving ball back to the opposition as profit).

If they play that stuff against the All Blacks, they'll be slaughtered; Howley might find himself at the Britomart, wearing a blue raincoat and red gumboots, with a sign round his neck saying (with apologies to Paddington Bear): "Please look after this attack coach. Thank you."

They have a good scrum and a highly efficient lineout (which crumbled under last-minute pressure against the Blues) but, on the evidence of the first two matches, no game-breakers. Rieko Ioane's pace troubled them - interesting in that Jack Nowell and Elliot Daly were supposed to be speed merchants.

When it wasn't the Lions' entirely obvious efforts at "chaos", it was CJ Stander and other forwards tramping into the midfield where Sonny Bill Williams or the likes of Ofa Tu'ungafasi knocked them over.

That won't beat the All Blacks. Goalkicking might - but the height of irony was Steven Perofeta hitting the upright with an easy penalty kick and the Blues scoring from the rebound.

The Lions have looked ponderous. The great deception of watching northern hemisphere rugby is that they are playing other northern teams.

They have improved their passing and catching but it is revealed as a mirage when their game is transplanted to the south.

It has long been the northern fashion to decry what they see as soft and frothy Super Rugby - overlooking the fact the modern game rewards skill more than power. Here, they seem surprised by the pace of the game, the ability of New Zealand sides to get the ball wide and create space. It seems a vital flaw.

Northern sides tend to play a forwards-based game where the backs only get the ball when the pack has run out of ideas.

The All Blacks use their backs as a weapon, selecting forwards with pace and ball skills grown as kids to act as support players and link men.

If an illustration is ever needed re the difference between the hemispheres, Ihaia West's winning try on Wednesday is ideal - a loose forward offload, a midfielder's offload and a pacey support player running off them at speed.

The Lions had nothing like that, though they could have had two more tries and might have beaten the Blues with more control, an element they will surely seek in the tests.

Their fans at Eden Park were the quietest I have ever heard. Much of the British media have aped their team's predictable performances with equally inevitable criticism of the haka and then of the Kiwi over-reaction - plus the time-honoured journalistic gambit of savaging the coach.

That said, this was written before the Crusaders game - and a win will be a huge confidence boost for the Lions, who looked like they were fielding their test backline.
The spirit of '73 may yet arise. But do they have a Rossborough? A Webster? Forwards who can break the gain line with guile and technique as well as bashing? We'll see.