Richard Loe: Lions win a bad advertisement for rugby

The Crusaders get one over the Lions scrum. Photo / Brett Phibbs

If you need an indication of how much tonight's win affected Lions fans, well I'm thinking of changing my cell phone number after all these messages started flooding in from Poms and Welshmen before the final whistle.

The general theme was "a win's a win", but as I said to some of them "could you really watch that sort of rugby week-to-week?"

Defensively they shut down the Crusaders, and didn't give them the chance to play their usual flowing game. Several Lions made a nuisance of themselves, which was an improvement, but they're still lacking attacking flair.

I've got no qualms about the Crusaders getting beaten fair and square, but that's not a great advertisement for the game. If the Lions had won by the same margin, and both teams had scored three or four tries, I would have been happier. In New Zealand we're accustomed to seeing great tries whether it's at club, Super or All Blacks level.

I think it's an indication of how the northern hemisphere game is played. The Lions had a French referee, meaning it was different for the Crusaders on issues like high tackles, the distribution of yellow cards, turnover ball and what makes a static maul. There's quite a discrepancy.

One area of the Lions operation I was impressed with was the link from No.8 to halfback to first-five.

Taulupe Faletau played well, and surely they've got to go with Conor Murray and Owen Farrell as their 9-10 test combination. Murray was brilliant and Farrell has an ability to spot gap.

The Lions scrum was a worry because the Crusaders effectively have the All Blacks front row, but even when they had a complete swap, the Crusaders' replacements dominated.

There were also a couple of lineout glitches throwing over the back and missing their men. They can't afford that at international level.

"Gats" will be relieved as coach, but where do they go from here? He's presumably pulling together their First XV and they must play together next Saturday.

He also went to hug someone in the coaches' box afterwards and their heads went to the same side. That's up there with a John Key three-way handshake. You have to get that sort of stuff ironed out if you're going to do it in public.