Aussies claim moral victory amid summer of disrespect

RTÉ News​

4 days ago

If the Kerry footballers thought they were disrespected, they should see what the members of Australia's beleaguered rugby union community have had to contend with this summer.
British and Irish Lions captain Maro Itoje rushed to their opponents' defence last week.
"We know we are not playing a pub team," Itoje told the press pack ahead of the second Test last weekend.
As a montage-friendly war cry, it wasn't exactly up there with "This is your Everest, boys."
Otherwise, Itoje has also busied himself by quoting from passages of the New Testament, in the midst of a tour which has, for most of it, not been terribly biblical.
The Wallabies rescued their honour in last weekend's second Test with a stirring performance which came agonisingly close to resulting in a famous victory. It would have been an especially sweet win given the narrative that has taken hold.
To paraphrase Dalo, they have listened to many jibes. They were told to stick to the rugby league, and the Aussie Rules, and the cricket. And even the day-time soaps.
Well, in Sydney and Brisbane at least, a small strata of them love their rugby union as well.
The sport's struggles in Australia have been widely documented, even before the lurid disaster that was the 2023 World Cup.
Stuart Barnes has noted that rugby in Australia is associated with the empire and the private school network - although the latter would hardly make it an outlier in the rugby world.
Its popularity is dwarfed by the league code in the rugby heartlands to the east of the ' Barassi Line ', while Aussie Rules has a lock on Melbourne.
Before the Australians' rousing moral victory in the second Test, all the talk was of how this could well be the last time the Lions would condescend to give them a game. Or at least privilege them with their own three-Test series.
This looming sense that the Wallabies are on notice has formed much of the background noise to this tour, to the chagrin of Matt Williams and co.
That if the Aussies don't get their house in order, the Lions would, for the sake of their own hardly invulnerable brand, be forced to cut them from the roster.
Thereafter, it would return to the old dispensation, where they simply alternated between touring South Africa and New Zealand. Or perhaps, an experimental fixture against France.
Maybe they'd arrange a game against the Wallabies during the erstwhile New Zealand tour, in between their matches against the Blues and Crusaders. But no guarantees, etc.
The need for the opposition to be up to scratch is especially acute when it comes to Lions tours, because very few people care deeply about the outcome.
For most casual followers, the Lions, if it's about anything, is about spectacle and novelty and the prospect of a grand one-off contest between elite players.
There's a vanishing small sliver of the population whose morning, let alone their summer, is going to be soured because the Lions lost a Test match.
In most cases, enthusiasm levels are heavily reliant on your own nation's contingent claiming a decent wedge of spots on the Test team.
Hence the extreme levels of apathy being reported in Wales, a far cry from the 1970s or indeed 12 years ago.
The Irish are very much to this tour what the Welsh were to 2013, with our coach calling the shots and usually coming down on the side of the boys he knows best.
We've had the obligatory social media content of the English and the Scottish lads trying hurling.
Given the Irish-dominated make-up of the Test team, perhaps it should have been our boys reaching out on this occasion.
Maybe some clips of Hugo Keenan and Jack Conan trying Morris Dancing or singing Bread of Heaven.
It wasn't always so.
Up to the mid-1960s, the Lions would often include a game or two against Australia in tours where matches against New Zealand were the centrepiece.
In three Antipodean tours of the 1950s and 60s, the Lions won six from six Test matches against Australia and won one of their 12 matches against New Zealand.
The current roster commenced in 1989, in the dying days of the amateur era, following Australia's ascension to the front rank of international rugby.
By then, Ireland was in the early stages of a very long rugby recession which would drag on more or less until the dawn of the millennium. The impact of Irish players in the '89 series was negligible.
Brendan Mullin was selected for the first Test, which the Lions lost badly and was dropped for the next.
Under some pressure, Ian McGeechan placed his faith in a brutish pack of English forwards who would go on to dominate the Five Nations in the coming years, the likes of Mike Teague, Wade Dooley, Paul Ackford and Dean Richards.
The Lions went on to grind out a win in a particularly thuggish game, which left the rugby scribes back home more scandalised than chuffed.
Jeremy Guscott did rustle up the match-winning try with an ingenious grubber kick.
After the score, the cameras zoomed in on a jubilant travelling fan in a Terry Butcher-era Rangers jersey, with Union Jacks hoisted in celebration behind.
The scene almost serves to underline that this was a triumph that had little to do with Irish rugby one way or the other.
There were no Irish involved the following week either, when the Lions sealed a 2-1 series win after David Campese threw an exotically dangerous reverse pass to a team-mate in his own in-goal area, which was fumbled, allowing Ieuan Evans to score an opportunistic try.
The Wallabies, still fresh from the glow of their second World Cup win in 1999 and in the midst of a rare period of Tri-Nations dominance, came from behind to win the 2001 series, which was played in the midst of the Foot and Mouth panic when Ireland still had three games left in the Six Nations.
The tour is best remembered for a spectacular Brian O'Driscoll try in first Test, Ronan O'Gara getting his head punched off in a wild frenzied assault from Duncan McRae, and an increasingly haggard Graham Henry making himself an enemy of a couple of mouthy English players - Austin Healey and Matt Dawson, specifically.
The 2013 victory was another which was deemed little cause for celebration on this side of the water, following the shock omission of Brian O'Driscoll for the third Test.
This time around, at least, it's primarily an Irish rugby triumph although there aren't many parties dragging long into the night.