Lions land in Sydney with sore heads as Australia continue to fume over MCG endgame

Irish Times

27-07-2025

A day after they'd gone to war and gone to the wire, the respective
Wallabies
and
Lions
squads made the post-second Test trek from Melbourne to Sydney for next Saturday's series finale, one with heavy hearts, the other with collective sore heads.
Joe Schmidt
and his Australian squad were on a morning flight and, one ventures, an altogether quieter one, not least as Andrea Piardi and his match officials were apparently among them.
Andy Farrell
has cultivated a ruthless, winning mentality in the touring squad and hence they were frolicking and cavorting like caged Lions let loose into the wild in the aftermath of Saturday's dramatic and pulsating 29-26 win to emulate the series win of 2013.
As Farrell and
Maro Itoje
were conducting their valedictory post-match press conference in a cramped room in the otherwise spacious MCG, they were already being serenaded by the rest of the squad in the away 'shed'. In their own, ever-changing adaptation of Rockin' All Over the World, the chorus hailed coach and captain: 'Ohhhhh Farrell and Captain Marohhhh'.
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The squad's extensive playlist carried on throughout the Lions and Wallabies press conferences, and included Dirty Old Town which, although popularised by The Dubliners and The Pogues, was written by an Englishman of Scottish extraction, Ewan McColl, about Salford in Manchester.
The players then brought white chairs and beers out to the centre of the MCG pitch, by then deserted of its record-breaking 90,037 attendance, and when
Hugo Keenan
emerged from his media duties in the mixed zone he had to re-enact his match-winning 80th minute try.
Meanwhile, Schmidt had already been stoking up the widespread outrage that the try had not been over-ruled and a penalty awarded to the Wallabies on review for Jac Morgan's clearout on Carlo Tizzano at the preceding ruck.
Former Wallaby turned pundit Morgan Turinui said on Stan Sport: 'The referees were too weak to give it.' And described it as 'a terrible decision'.
Australia backrow Carlo Tizzano receives treatment after the clearout by the Lions' Jac Morgan at a ruck in the lead-up to Hugo Keenan's late try at the MCG. Photograph:'Robbed' screamed the back page of the Sunday Telegraph, while inside the heading on one piece read 'This Will Cost Us Forever'.
Yet the Lions, to a man, maintained Morgan had made a legal clearout on Tizzano, with
Finn Russell
indicating that the Wallabies sub had milked the moment. And the outrage would have been even greater had Keenan's try been ruled out on review for something that happens in every second ruck.
The pity is that the controversy distracted from an unforgettable Test in front of the biggest crowd to ever watch the Lions play in Australia and the biggest rugby union attendance on Australian soil in two decades.
And who knows, despite all the naysayers who have decried the Wallabies and the series, primarily from home, this may mark the beginning of a rebirth for Australian rugby.
Saturday's epic win, sealed by Keenan's finish to an utterly compelling 13-phase attack, was all the more memorable for the Wallabies producing what has been described as their best performances in the last decade.
They were a side transformed, not surprisingly, by the raised stakes, the injection of Will Skelton and Rob Valetini's ball carrying, sharpened lineout launch plays and Joseph Suaalii coming to the party.
'They were good. They turned up,' agreed Farrell. 'I suppose the drama and how it unfolded is what makes it special. You wouldn't have backed us at 23-5 but to find a way adds to the story, doesn't it? It adds to the fairytale.'
Saturday's game had uncanny echoes of Ireland's epic clash with the All Blacks at the Aviva Stadium in 2013. Back then, Schmidt was overseeing just his third match as Ireland's head coach. A week previously Ireland had been beaten 32-15 by Australia and akin to last week's build-up, his Wallabies side went into Saturday's game as 10-point underdogs, with a 7-2 chance of victory.
Jamison Gibson-Park leads the celebrations in the Lions' dressingroom after the win over Australia at the MCG. Photograph: Dan Sheridan/Inpho
On that November Sunday in 2013, Ireland flew out of the blocks with a three-try salvo to lead 22-7 after 35 minutes. Here, the Wallabies' three-try salvo earned them a 23-5 lead after 31 minutes. Ireland would not add another point while on Saturday the Wallabies were restricted to just one more Tom Lynagh penalty in the 54th minute.
A dozen years ago, the All Blacks completed the biggest comeback in their history to lead 24-22 for the first time with the last play of the game, namely Aaron Cruden's retaken conversion after Ryan Crotty's try.
On Saturday, after Keenan's try was confirmed, the Lions thus led for the first time with the last play of the game to complete their biggest Test comeback in history; the only difference being that Russell's conversion served to run down the lock and wasn't required to seal the victory.
Russell spoke of the 'calmness' which permeated throughout the Lions, both at 23-7 down and entering the endgame. Their matchday squad boasted 1,337 Test caps as against the Wallabies' 715, and perhaps tellingly, their finishing XV had 789 caps to their opponents' 335.
When they first came together, Farrell targeted a 3-0 series win in Australia for the first time since a 'British Isles' team did so in 1904.
'Everybody wants to play next week,' said Russell, a sentiment echoed by Itoje.
For Farrell to be true to his word, the changes in selection might be sprinkling rather than wholesale. After all, the likes of
Tadhg Furlong
, Itoje, Tom Curry and
Jack Conan
deserve to be ever-presents for a second series in a row, and in Furlong's case a third, and ditto key performers like
Dan Sheehan
,
Tadhg Beirne
,
Jamison Gibson-Park
and Russell, while
Joe McCarthy
,
Garry Ringrose
and
Mack Hansen
could come back into the mix.
Decision, decisions, decisions. But from a happy place.