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What to make of the British and Irish Lions so far? In one word: Welsh! It was perhaps to be expected given they picked the Welsh coach, and he picked a Welsh captain, and almost all of the front-line Welsh team.
But it’s fair to say nothing the Lions have done so far on tour to date has really come as a surprise to our camp.
We know both the Welsh, and their coach (Lions coach) Warren Gatland, pretty well.
We should do – we’ve played them about a million times in the last couple of years, and will now be seeing them again on this year’s Spring Tour.
But that means they know us pretty well too.
The Welsh like to play a bit, and use the full width of the field when they can, but this generally follows a few phases of very direct play first.
In old fashion terms, they will take it up the guts, bash away, and then try to go wide once they’ve sucked in as many defenders in as they can.
The Lions are doing the same thing.
There’s not a lot of subtlety too it, but it’s effective and they do it well.
On defence, they try to suffocate you by closing quickly and shutting down your options, with the big men all ready to pounce when the ball is turned back on the inside.
Their general tactical understanding, across the whole playing group, has been clear in the tour matches, especially on turnover ball, which was so evident in last weekend’s game against the NSW Waratahs.
The ‘Tahs actually recycled the ball at the breakdown quicker than the Lions did, but they were less effective with it and easily smothered by the Lions up-and-in defensive system as a result.
There were times when NSW actually lost ground when in possession before turning it over: that is Wales all over, they do that to just about every team they face!
And whenever NSW turned the ball over, the Lions were off.
Think how often the wingers, Simon Zebo and Sean Maitland, and the fullback, Leigh Halfpenny, were involved?
That Halfpenny scored two tries underlines the fact the Lions go straight to the sides off turnover ball.
They are not afraid to shift it, although one suspects they will be a bit more conservative in the Tests – at least to start with – when their ‘plan’ is pretty obviously going to be to try and bash us.
In all of the games against Wales last year, the contest at the breakdown was fierce.
Last June, the Welshies took any opportunity they could find to try and hold down (or back) Dave Pocock and Will Genia, and more of the same is coming.
The referees did bugger all about it too, so hopefully Chris Pollock (first Test), Craig Joubert (second) and Romain Poite (third) have done some studying of those games as preparation.
Wales are a good team so it’s no surprise to see the Lions relying on their Welsh spine.
But you do wonder how the English, Irish and Scottish lads are handling having the Welsh game-plan ‘imposed’ on them, and especially their thoughts given most of them seem to be behind Welsh guys in the Test pecking order.
Could make for some interesting ‘closed door’ conversations – especially if the ‘Welsh’ tactics don’t work!
All of our games with Wales were line-ball decisions last year, as was the Test with England.
Even though we won them, you suspect the closeness of the games will give their players belief they can win the series.
Certainly their touring press think so by what you read, but that suits us.
One aspect of being in camp away from them is that we’ve been able to work away quietly, letting them have the attention and make all of the noise, while we get on with it.
Much has been made of the fact some of the boys haven’t had a lot of rugby but that could work in our favour.
Players like Kurtley Beale, Pat McCabe and James O’Connor are coming in fresh, while even the likes of Will Genia and James Horwill haven’t been bashed as much as they usually are, to this time of the year, due to their late starts to the season because of injury.
The two weeks away from playing has allowed everyone to freshen up a bit after what had been a pretty torrid Super Rugby season – whose toll had started to show with the rash of injuries that cropped up just before the Wallabies assembled.
Guys like Pocock, Scotty Higginbotham, Tatafu Polota Nau and Sita Timani are going to be missed, but their replacements have all had plenty of rugby and most have previously been with the Wallabies after all of the injuries we had last year.
The general familiarity everyone has with the way the team works, and with each other, has meant the training camps have run smoothly, with the coaches, quite cleverly, managing the load so there hasn’t been too much intense contact work.
That has just allowed the bodies to recover from all of the niggles everyone usually plays with, while energising everyone that little bit more ahead of the series opener.
The mood is good. Everyone is excited, and the guys who’ve been in the team dugouts for the state games have all fed off that energy, and brought that feeling with them back to camp.
Likewise, the four guys who got to play in the tour games have come back with a bit of intelligence, although it’s mostly confirmed what we already knew: these blokes are Wales in disguise!
It won’t be easy, and Wales, sorry, I mean the Lions, will throw everything at us.
But Suncorp is our place, the best stadium in the world game, with an electric atmosphere that our guys love to feed off, the non-Reds boys especially, as they don’t normally have that parochial Reds mafia behind them!
(Only joking on the mafia bit, Roarers!)
As a team, the Wallabies are ready to go.
Hopefully you are too!
Let the games begin.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.