Is winning all that matters or must Lions deliver more in final Test?
It was Finn Russell who said it first. In the passageway beneath the MCG, in the wake of the Lions securing the series against the Wallabies last Saturday, the fly-half insisted that the job was not yet done in Australia and would only be done if the Lions turned the 2-0 from Melbourne into 3-0 in Sydney.A clean sweep is what they came here for and a clean sweep is what they need to stand a chance of being remembered in the way they wish to be remembered. The Lions need to finish with a flourish. Listening to them this past week, they know that better than anybody.For weeks now, one Lion after another has spoken about their target being a landslide and that kind of rhetoric has only intensified since Melbourne.Andy Farrell was asked the other day if the bravado from his players sat well with him. "I never think you should shy away from shooting for the stars because you might end up on the moon," he said."I don't think you should shy away from challenging each other and if you don't get there, then hopefully it's somewhere near. It sets the mentality in my mind of what delivering means. What's there to be shy at? Players, coaches, staff, everyone, Lions fans, want to win every game. You can't be frightened of that."So here we are. The Lions are favourites to win their third Test in a row (probably not the case since they toured Argentina in 1927 and won 4-0) and, if they achieve it, it will be the first time they've won three on the spin in 51 years.By their own estimation they have not had to produce a complete performance to get this far. Fifty minutes here and fifty minutes there has been enough.After winning the first Test comfortably they said they were going to have to be considerably better if they were going to win the second. In many areas they were worse (the Wallabies were much improved) and they still won.To their credit, of course, but you don't get to be great Lions if you're falling over the winning line against moderate opponents."While the first two games have been great because we got two wins, there's still a feeling that we haven't put it together in a way we know that we can," said captain Maro Itoje. "That's the exciting thing for us - we want to chase down the performance we have been searching for."Jack Conan, the Irish number eight, had his own particular take on the Lions still not having produced what they think they're capable of."A lot of us weren't at the races at all, but we stuck in there," Conan said in the wake of the dramatic Melbourne win. "We were not at our best by any measure, but physically the lads dug in unbelievably well. It was disappointing how we played, but we played for 80 minutes."
There's been a feeling about these Lions that they are potentially a very fine team made up of a healthy collection of world class players. There's also a feeling that if they click then the Wallabies - shorn again of the wonderful Rob Valetini in their back row - will be taken to the cleaners.The Lions need a performance that blows the door off. But the problem in legacy terms is that even then, in the best case scenario of a Wallaby shellacking, we will wonder how good the Lions could have been had they had better opponents, had the Springboks or the All Blacks been down the other end.That's a question with no answer. We'll never know. At some point of the journey, Ben Earl said he wanted his side to go down in history as the best, or among the best, Lions teams in history.Earl wasn't around in 1971, 1974 or 1997, but they're the pantheon tours of all time. Aspiring to join them was exactly the right mindset to have, but you need true competition to get anywhere close to greatness and the Lions haven't had enough of it on this trip. It's not their fault, but it is their truth.The Wallabies have spent their week fuming over the Jac Morgan clearout with Joe Schmidt donning a boffin's hat in giving his version of events. "There were just over 54 Gs of direct force that went through the neck [of his flanker Carlo Tizzano when Morgan hit him] along with almost 2200 rads [radians] of rotational force, which is enough to cause serious injury."Schmidt knows all about G-force and rotational force but couldn't get his staff to get the Wallaby team bus to the MCG on time. He was still banging on about the Tizzano incident five days after the event.Hugo Keenan's late, late try broke the Wallabies. How they can put themselves back together again is anybody's guess, but without Valetini the job is a whole lot harder.They've also got two Tests against the Springboks coming up this month and Schmidt is already talking about those games, as if the final Test is more about preparation for the Rugby Championship than a face-saving mission against the Lions. If the Wallabies have lost focus, they're doomed.
For the Lions players and the coaches, and especially for Farrell, making it 3-0 is big. Frankly, a game of tiddlywinks would be a major deal in his world. The full weight of Farrell's personality does not come out in a crowded room full of journalists, but his players - the Irish guys who are familiar with him and the rest who are not - talk about him in almost reverential tones.Huw Jones is one of the 11 who will start his third Test in a row on this tour, and he spoke about his coach on Thursday: "He's been really good at getting everyone closer," said the centre. "I don't really know how he's done it but it's worked. I wasn't really sure what to expect from the outside, but he's very calm and relaxed a lot of the time and when he's on he's pretty intense."When we're training he doesn't miss a beat. He sees everything. There's no hiding place. His standards are so high. He doesn't need to try to be intimidating. He just is. Not in a bad way, in a good way. It's just how he commands respect. Some people just have that presence."Would Farrell do the job again in 2029? "Would I? Give me a break, would you. Let me get through Saturday. Honestly, for me it has been absolutely brilliant. I have absolutely loved every single minute and I knew I would because I just love everything that the Lions is about. Thinking about the future is not something that's on my mind until I get home and have a bit of reflection on the whole thing."And a bit of Oasis. "I'm definitely going to that," he smiled. "We've got a few tickets for the Saturday night at Croke Park." Before then, a game to secure a place in history, some might say.
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