Johnson offers stark warning: Lions should expect fierce Wallabies backlash

The Guardian

2 days ago

This week the Rugby Club of Victoria hosted a fundraising dinner in the Olympic Room at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Among the evening's highlights was a fascinating Q&A session featuring Martin Johnson and Alun Wyn Jones, both of whom have led Lions teams into series-defining games and know from personal experience just how swiftly a sure thing can disintegrate.
Johnson may have hoisted the Rugby World Cup in Australia in 2003 but the merest mention of the 2001 Lions tour, even two decades later, still prompts him to put his head in his hands. The Lions, as now, had won the opening Test with relative ease and were in front at half-time in Melbourne the following week. They felt firmly in control of the game and on the verge of sporting immortality.
And then, in a flash, all their dreams were summarily dashed. Jonny Wilkinson had an attempted long pass intercepted, Richard Hill was taken out by an off‑the‑ball elbow and the Wallabies, 11-6 down at the interval, surged clear to win 35-14. A week later, with the Lions by now feeling the effects of a long, hard season, Justin Harrison's stolen late lineout duly completed a famous Australian triumph in Sydney.
It may not be entirely coincidental, then, that the battle-hardened Johnson was invited into camp to present the 2025 squad with their jerseys before what, for many, is the biggest game of their lives. He fully expects the underdog Wallabies to bite back after their Brisbane bashing, when the Lions won most of the key collisions and might have scored two or three more tries in the first half alone.
With rain also around to complicate things, his gut feel is that those blithely expecting a Lions clean sweep are getting ahead of themselves. Jones, similarly, was part of the 2013 Lions squad which took the first Test in Australia only to go down narrowly in the second. They went on to win the decider in Sydney but, once again, nothing was guaranteed until the closing night of the series. The present Wallaby squad may not be the strongest in history but there is no more potent sporting cocktail than a mixture of damaged pride and do-or-die necessity.
It is also hard to believe their head coach, Joe Schmidt, has not been sifting the ashes of the first‑half Suncorp surrender with the finest-toothed comb. Now Rob Valetini and Will Skelton are back, supported by a 6-2 forward‑heavy bench, the Wallabies should be much harder to skittle this time, particularly with Joe McCarthy injured and Ellis Genge benched. And if some front-foot ball is forthcoming, the hosts' attacking potential will potentially be transformed.
At which point one of two hairline cracks in the Lions edifice might just be exposed. Talking to several former Lions out here there is near-unanimous concern that the touring side have not yet fully clicked as a forward unit. Their work around the breakdown can be frustratingly bitty and has lacked a cold-eyed ruthlessness that, say, the All Blacks would regard as non-negotiable.
No one could also accuse James Lowe of being in the form of his life on the left wing. It is a not dissimilar story with James Ryan, who is nevertheless now involved on the Test bench. Hugo Keenan has been an Irish linchpin for several years but, again, has yet to soar to any great heights in Australia since returning from illness. Farrell must be hoping his green-tinged Lions are saving their best until last.
Then there is the midfield duo of Bundee Aki and Huw Jones, which would have morphed into an all-Irish duo had the originally selected Garry Ringrose not stepped aside because of concussion symptoms. How exactly will Jones react, having dovetailed nicely with his mate Sione Tuipulotu in the first Test only for both players to be initially jettisoned for the second? And can he and Aki – 'Hundee'? 'Jaki'? – now write themselves into Lions folklore regardless?
The most obvious conclusion is that Farrell is braced for an awkward contest which will require his side to dig deep defensively at times. There is also the minor matter of the refereeing. Andrea Piardi was the man in the middle in April, when Munster were mistakenly forced to play with 14 men for almost a quarter of an hour in a United Rugby Championship match against the Bulls after confusion over the laws surrounding uncontested scrums.
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On the flip side, Piardi – who will become the first Italian to take charge of a Lions Test – has plenty of experience when it comes to refereeing Leinster, who supply no fewer than nine members of the Lions' matchday 23. Australia would be foolish to pin hope on anything out of their control, anyway. A more proactive plan, surely, is to start more strongly, get ahead on the scoreboard for the first time in the series and then see how the Lions respond when they are required to chase a game.
And if the contest is still tight after an hour, the Wallaby bench is by no means the worst, with Angus Bell, Carlo Tizzano, Langi Gleeson and Tate McDermott all equipped to raise the tempo a notch. It is not a stretch to suggest the Wallabies will be a dozen points stronger this week which, if so, will require the Lions to up their game as well.
Either way, it is necessary to rewind to 1950 and 1989 to find postwar instances of the Lions winning both the last two Tests of a series. Which backs up Johnson's warning to today's players that it is less a case of picking up where they left off at the final whistle in Brisbane as in effect starting again from scratch. 'We had Martin Johnson in last night,' said the Lions scrum coach, John Fogarty. 'He talked about the small margins in the biggest games and doing the fundamentals. For him as a player the issue was compounding errors. Those are the things you need to make sure you're on top of during the match. We are not going to get everything our own way.'
Ironically enough, Johnson could yet be left clutching an unwanted record if the Lions take an unassailable lead. Should that happen, as he self-deprecatingly observed this week, it will leave him as the only postwar Lions captain to have lost a series in Australia. In isolation this contest could be nip and tuck but a dead rubber in Sydney still feels the likeliest outcome.