Make no mistake, this was one of the best wins that I’ve ever seen when you consider the context.
Down 9 points at halftime, away from home against the current World Champions while living and training in a COVID bubble with a rake of low onfield-minute combinations all over the field – this was something special. Sure, they rode their luck at key junctions and got the benefit of some handy decisions in the second half, but that shouldn’t take away from the scale of this legacy-defining win for Warren Gatland.
Who else can say they have coached a Lions series win over Australia, a drawn series against the then-double World Champion All Blacks and now this win in the first test over the reigning World Champion Springboks? Regardless of what happens in the rest of the series, Gatland’s position as an all-time great coach in this sport is secured, for me, if it hadn’t been already for a man as decorated as he is.
So how did the Lions manage this win?
Let’s be clear first of all – this was a razor-close game. Offensively, there was very little between the teams over the course of the full 80 minutes. For example, the Springboks carried the ball 83 times, with 43.7% of those carries going over the gainline. The Lions carried the ball 85 times for a gainline success percentage rate of 42.3%. Overall possession and territory were split 52/48 and 55/45 in the Lions favour – not much in it there really – so what was the main point of difference? Discipline. The Lions turned over possession 13 times, the Springboks 14 times but the Lions decisively won the penalty battle, only conceding 8 penalties compared to South Africa’s 14. That’s the most amount of penalties conceded by the Springboks in a single game since their loss to England on the 23rd of June 2018.
Wherever Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber start in their assessment of this game, fixing that aspect of their performance is priority #1.
The rest will likely focus on getting their role sets correct from a selection and/or usage perspective. Speaking of which.
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The Destruction of Kwagga Smith
The Springboks’ selection of Kwagga Smith to start at #8 for this game raised a few eyebrows all over the game. Duane Vermuelen – currently recovering from an ankle injury – has been the key guy in that jersey for the Springboks for a number of years and is arguably the most important component of their defensive system as well as being a key player for them offensively and at the set-piece.
Vermuelen is the archetypal power-forward role player for the Springboks in that he has all the qualities you’d expect from a former second-row – lineout jumping, lifting, tight power – with all the offensive traits you’d want in a traditional Eightman in that he’s got power, pace and a wide on-ball skillset. That elite power forward role is not a role that is easily filled because of the wide variety of skills and physical traits required. Vermuelen is 6’4″ and listed as well north of 115KG so when I saw Kwagga Smith listed as an #8 for the Springboks I dismissed any suggestion that this could be a role for role replacement.
Smith is listed at 5’11” and 95KG. I would describe him as a wing forward archetype who, when used effectively, has legit upside in the elite game. He is a World Cup winner, after all, but he is not a power forward in the way that you would not utilise Duane Vermeulen as a strike wing forward. It would be a poor use of his skill set and natural physical traits. Rugby is a sport that we like to say is a game for all sizes and while that is true, the modern game demands that any lack of size in the pack has to be compensated for with size elsewhere.
Exeter’s Sam Simmonds, for example, is one of the smallest #8s in the game but it doesn’t matter because Exeter have a pack built to compliment Simmonds skill set as a strike wing forward. They, essentially, put four locks around Simmonds and allow him to take a lot of possession in the wider channels to better take advantage of his speed and power.
On Saturday, I fully expected Smith to be utilised as a defensive and transition focused wing forward who would rack up a tonne of defensive involvements – tackle, poach and kick pressure attempts – while showing up on offensive kick transition sequences and taking what possession the Springboks chose to use in wider positions. That was not how it panned out.
In fact, if you look at Smith’s stat line, you’ll see his usage is much closer to that of a power forward. He only made 5 tackles, didn’t impact at the breakdown and, because of his role on the restarts, ended up with 13 carries – the most of any Springbok or Lions forward which is exactly what the Lions would have wanted.
If you’re Warren Gatland, how do you scheme it so that the smallest and lightest forward on the pitch gets the most amount of heavy traffic? By attacking him on restarts.
If we go back to the 2019 World Cup, we can see a consistent picture in the Springboks restart structure. Damian De Allende and Duane Vermuelen are the pin players on the back edges of the shape.
What does this mean? They are the heavy carry options if the opposition look to keep deep to pressure the Springboks kicking tendencies. Because you know the Springboks kick every single possession in their own 22, the longer you kick to them and the harder you hit that receiver, the more you pressure that exit. For the Springboks, they want two explosive carriers to win that first collision and set a good position for De Klerk or Pollard to exit from, should the opposition choose to use that tactic.
Fast forward to 2021, and the Springboks are using more or less the same principle except in this first test, it is Kwagga Smith wearing the #8 jersey.
Right from the first kick-off, there was a bit of uncertainty in the Springboks structure with De Allende and Smith switching wings right before the kickoff.
For the Lions, they’d have been looking to pressure any restart opportunity to limit the range South Africa could get on their kick exit, which you knew was coming. Pressure the back pin, limit the range of the exit. It’s a solid principle when you have to restart against a side with the Springboks kicking tendencies.
The Springboks switched Smith back to the left-field pin position after the initial kick-off and the Lions consistently punished him on the receipt of the kick.
But how do you engineer the kind of one on one isolation that could really hurt a player like Smith? If you were drawing it up, you’d want Kwagga Smith taking a kick receipt without other forwards in close proximity and one of your biggest, quickest, heaviest hitters chasing him down for force errors and transition opportunities.
Can you generate that scenario on phase play? No, not usually. The Springboks use Smith as a defensive reader close to the ruck so when you kick on phase play, you won’t find Smith in the backfield. See?
You’re way more likely to see Smith in and around the ruck in these positions but you can find him in the backfield on a few special occasions – the Springboks restart.
Go back to 2019 and you’ll see Duane Vermuelen regularly dipping back into the Springboks backfield on South Africa’s restarts.
The Springboks have Smith running the exact same role and, not only that, the very first Springbok restart would have shown Gatland and his team that Smith is a little hesitant and unsure of himself under the high ball. What would the Lions be guaranteed to have after halftime? A Springbok restart.
Let’s see what happened.
From that penalty, the Lions scored a maul try that changed the complexion of the contest. And off the very next restart, the Lions went back to the same scheme, as they did on every single South African until Smith was replaced and Kolisi took his spot off the restart in the backfield.
South Africa didn’t make an adjustment until it was too late and they were chasing the game. All throughout the game, Smith was in positions where he was in “off-role” positions, where he was expected to be making stops on tight five forwards that had 10KG+ on him.
It seems like South Africa transplanted Smith into Vermuelen’s role to which he was completely unsuited. Why, for example, was Smith used a central hinge lifter on a close-range defensive maul? Not only was a shorter, physically weaker trying to power up a second-row lifter, he was also hitting the kind of positions you’d expect from Vermuelen, while Marx and other heavier players stayed in covering positions.
This just does not make sense to me. The Lions continually exploited an off-role Kwagga Smith for tangible territory, possession or penalty gains. Smith is not a bad player but his usage in this game was muddled from the start and actively hindered the Springboks in the second half by allowing the Lions a constant source of momentum.
I’d be shocked if there isn’t a change made there ahead of next week.
***
Also of concern to the Springboks will be their inability to force genuine attacking positions when their kick pressure game does not fire when they need it. As soon as the Lions crept ahead, you wondered where the Springboks scores would come from if a kick pressure sequence didn’t provide a workable error or an attackable transition sequence.
When this bit of transition buffoonery was struck out for Kolbe’s knock-on at the start of the play, I really got the feeling that the Springboks had nothing else for the Lions.
How do you expect to start running phases like the All Blacks when you’re chasing the game when your structure is set up to be the team keeping the opposition at arm’s length while they chase the game? You can’t. It doesn’t work like that. When the Springbok bench did not produce the expected impact at the scrum, I got the sense that the Springboks would need an error on transition to make something happen for them and when that didn’t happen while you continually concede penalties and turnovers, you lose more often than not, World Champions or not.
The Lions will expect a backlash next week but they will know what it is – the Springboks looking to perform the game we know they can play better than they did in the second half. If they can cut out the dumb penalties and turnovers, the Springboks could well win but there won’t be too many surprises for the Lions on the evidence of this game.
Notable Players
The Lions didn’t need to play a whole lot of attacking rugby to win this game but they had the tactical nous to find where the Springboks were weak in that second half. That tactical nous wouldn’t be possible without the physical stopping power of the three starting locks that powered this performance.
Jack Conan and Tadhg Furlong had bloody good games here – as did Mako Vunipola off the bench – but the three locks that started the game for the Lions were the perfect blend of role suitability and elite performance under pressure.
Alun Wyn Jones is an android of some description, we know this now for certain. I wondered before the game if he could fill 80 minutes for the Lions but he looked like he could have done at least another half hour at full time. Like I said – an android. Jones filled his role perfectly in this game where he hit offensive and defensive rucks, made impact tackles and reset carries all day. The Lions managed his workload to ensure he stayed effective – he scrummaged excellently all game but the Lions “paid” for that by cutting back his lineout involvements to the occasional lift, no jumps and a primary role on maul defence. Inspirational stuff from the Captain.
Courtney Lawes role as a 4/6D Lock is, without doubt, the best use of his skill set as this game will attest to. He impacted the game excellently in the loose but was most impressive as a lockdown target in the lineout when the Lions were looking a little wobbly there. He was the dominant back row on the field for both sides.
As we’re talking about 4/6D locks, let’s talk about the best in the business – Maro Itoje. I think it’s fair to say that Itoje was completely unplayable here for large stretches. The only downside to his game is when he lets his discipline slip. When he takes those penalties out of his game, he has the defensive intelligence and athleticism to destroy teams. He has the dexterity to be a breakdown threat, the stopping power to impact any ball carrier, the intelligence to consistently be in the right part of the field to most impact the game and the engine to do all of this for 80+ minutes.
Itoje isn’t a complete player – he doesn’t have the ball carrying to be classed as full complete – but he is arguably the best defensive player in the game with the kind of set-piece power and application to make him the first name on the teamsheet every single week for every team he plays for.
This was one of the great individual performances in the history of the British & Irish Lions. Itoje has the capacity to be an all-time great in this sport in the same way that the man alongside him in the second-row during this game is. Elite.
★★★★★
The Wally Ratings: South Africa (A)
The Wally Ratings explainer page is here.
Players are rated based on their time on the pitch, if they were playing notably out of position, and on the overall curve of the team performance. DNP means the player did not feature and N/A means they weren’t on the pitch long enough to warrant a fair rating.
| Names | Rating |
|---|---|
| Rory Sutherland | ★★★ |
| Luke Cowan-Dickie | ★★★ |
| Tadhg Furlong | ★★★★ |
| Maro Itoje | ★★★★★ |
| Alun Wyn Jones | ★★★★ |
| Courtney Lawes | ★★★★ |
| Tom Curry | ★★ |
| Jack Conan | ★★★★ |
| Ali Price | ★★★ |
| Dan Biggar | ★★★ |
| Duhan Van Der Merwe | ★★★★ |
| Robbie Henshaw | ★★★ |
| Elliot Daly | ★★ |
| Anthony Watson | ★★★ |
| Stuart Hogg | ★★★ |
| Ken Owen | ★★★ |
| Mako Vunipola | ★★★★ |
| Kyle Sinkler | ★★★ |
| Tadhg Beirne | ★★★ |
| Hamish Watson | ★★★ |
| Conor Murray | ★★★ |
| Owen Farrell | ★★★ |
| Liam Williams | ★★★ |
