THE TIME FOR debate is over and, as most suspected deep down, Lions coach Warren Gatland has rested his chips behind tour captain Sam Warburton to lead the tourists out against Australia on Saturday.
Warburton declared, “I told Warren that at the start. I don’t want to know if I’m starting [the Tests]. I don’t want to become complacement. I like going into those team announcements not knowing my place. That’s what drives me in training.”
He added, “You want to go out onto that pitch having that pressure. Most players in this squad now, the higher you go, when that pressure is piled on you, the good players deliver. Jonathan Davies was under presser on Saturday [against the Waratahs] and had an outstanding game.”
“Since the Queensland Reds team announcement,” he said, “I thought I had every chance, if I played well, of doing that. I won’t truly know how it feels until I get out there but the last two games, leading the boys, has been awesome. I know it’ll be another level again on Saturday.”
Warburton watched the 2001 Tour to Australia but, as he was 12 back then, confesses that he could not say which game was which. It was not until the disastrous tour to New Zealand, four years later, that he was fully engrossed in the battle of the rugby-playing hemispheres.
Warburton lays down the law to his Lions teammates. (©INPHO/Dan Sheridan)
The captain praised the ‘well drilled, physical’ Brumbies for knocking over the Lions dirt-trackers on Tuesday but insists the 14-12 loss will be soon forgotten if the Test team can started the three-match series on a winning note. Confidence has not been dented, he said before tellingly adding that, even if it had, the four-day turnaround sharply focused the mind.
The common consensus, from the home nations’ media at least, was that an Australian back row shorn of the playing services of David Pocock, George Smith and Scott Higginbotham would be mere playthings for whatever three foragers Gatland selected. However, the performances of Colby Faingaa and Peter Kimlin for the Brumbies have arrested such wishful thinking.
Warburton has only faced Wallaby openside Michael Hooper briefly in the past as the young flanker replaced Pocock in a Test outing against Wales last summer. “The one-on-one battle that sevens have at the breakdown is interesting,” he says, “but I always feel the breakdown is a 15-man job.”
Now into his third summer of captaincy at international level, the flanker is appreciative of support from past Lions captains, Paul O’Connell and Brian O’Driscoll, but will not be seeking them out for last-minute advice. He said:
Paulie and Drico have been speaking all week, talking to the players. Those guys are vital when it comes to Test match preparation as they have been all tour.”
He added, “Everybody is desperate to achieve. None of us have achieved a Lions Test Series win. It is something you desperately want to achieve. [In the squad] you have Heineken Cup, Grand Slam, Aviva Premiership winners but nobody has ticked the Lions box.”
