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The Lions scored five tries, all of them converted, against a kick-obsessed Rebels side in a 35 – 0 romp that ends the friendly matches of the 2013 tour of Australia.
This was a poor return for the Lions against a side that was courageous but without ideas.
Despite the wealth of ball won by their forwards and kicked to them by the Rebels, the Lions were only able to score one ensemble try, although it was a thing of beauty, perhaps the best try on the tour so far.
There is a big gap between the Lions Test side, in terms of intensity and skill level, from its weekday side. Against the Rebels, for instance, as they did against the Brumbies, the Lions had lineout and occasional scrum problems. But against the Wallabies on Saturday night, the Lions won all their lineouts and a crucial scrum early on, which influenced several scrum calls until the end of the Test from referee Chris Pollock.
Unlike the Brumbies match, though, the Lions were able to get through their match with the Rebels by playing mainly in the low gears. The Rebels made few demands on their defence and, for reasons I can’t work out, kicked the ball away to the Lions most of the time they had possession.
Towards the end of the match, for instance, the Rebels had a penalty inside the Lions’ 22. They formed a wall and moved the ball to a runner, who kicked a bomb! The bomb was defused and the Rebels attack fizzled out.
Why was the ball kicked away? Was this based on instructions from the coach? Were the players just out of their depth and – like Berrick Barnes in the Test with his incredibly inept and stupid bomb to George North (which was returned for a memorable try) – couldn’t think of anything else to do but to kick the ball away?
The other disappointing aspect of the match was the remarkably poor play of Luke Burgess. Burgess was slow to the rucks and mauls to clear the ball. He stood over the ball for an eternity before clearing it. His passing was poor. He knocked on.
Why oh why was he brought back to Australia by the Rebels? And surely he can’t be a candidate for selection in the Wallaby squad for the third Test?
The best aspect of the game was the passion showed by the Lions supporters. They supported their team with their Li-ONS! Li-ONS! Li-ONS! chants, even though their side didn’t actually need this support.
Before the match, too, they wandered around wonderful Melbourne in genial, red-shirted (men and women) groups, through the galleries showing a marvellous Monet exhibition and the equally marvellous pubs and eating places.
I chatted to several groups. They were relieved (as they should have been) that Kurtley Beale missed his last two shots at goal to give the Lions the first Test. And they were adamant the Lions would win the second Test quite comfortably.
What this was based on I wouldn’t know. What we will find out is whether the Lions were somehow slightly over-awed by the occasion of the first Test. And with the confidence of being one-up they could, one supposes, come back very strongly on Saturday night.
Or are the Lions finding the grind of constant moving and coming to the end of a long season a couple matches too much?
The point that really struck me about the first Test is that despite the fact virtually everything that could go wrong went wrong for the Wallabies, they were within two missed penalties at the end of the Test from snatching a victory.
There were moments in the Test when I thought the Lions would release an avalanche of points. But the avalanche never came.
It was the Wallabies who came back, despite the fact that at times they had players carrying injuries (Adam Ashley-Cooper and Digby Ioane) still on the field.
And as Rod Macqueen said on Monday, the Wallabies actually played better and came closer to winning than they did 12 years ago in the first Test against the Lions. Macqueen, of course, knows a thing or two about winning a Test series against the Lions after losing the first Test.
I’ve been struck by the media commentary, which has been generally supportive of the Wallabies, even those journalists who have campaigned against Robbie Deans.
What does this all mean? The suspicion is, and the match against the Rebels did nothing to disprove this, the Lions are running out of gas. The point here is that it was the under-done Wallabies who stormed back at the end of the Test.
The big issue for Deans is whether he plays some of the players, especially Christian Lealiifano, on Saturday night. All the talk is that this will happen.
Given what happened in the first minutes of play last Saturday, it’ll be a huge call if it is made. But against this is the fact that Lealiifano’s play at inside centre has been a crucial part of the Wallabies’ game plan to stretch the Lions defensive patterns.
There is one further consideration, too, for Deans. He is in the position where there is no margin for selection errors. Beale’s missed goals have had the effect of giving the Lions the luxury of losing and still staying in the series.