LIONS head coach Sir Clive Woodward pinpointed his team’s shocking lineout performance as the root cause of their emphatic defeat.
“We got the lineout wrong, and they did well — it’s as simple as that,” he said. “It has been a bad night for us. I picked a lineout team, and, as it turned out, they dominated that part of the game.”
When asked what had happened to the “warm feeling” he said he had going into the Test series after defeating Otago last weekend, Woodward admitted, “It’s pretty cold tonight — you’ve just got to cop it.”
However, he came back to the lineout as the reason his side had unravelled, citing the first-half try conceded to Ali Williams as a turning point. “Defensively we were fantastic, and then to give a soft try away from a lineout was very disappointing,” he added.
“Clearly if we can’t win ball at lineout time, we will struggle over here. But credit to New Zealand, they did very well in the conditions.”
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Looking at his weakened squad, after tour-ending injuries to captain Brian O’Driscoll, flanker Richard Hill and centre Tom Shanklin, Woodward did his best to be upbeat.
“We had the O’Driscoll injury and also lost Tom Shanklin in training, but we’ve got to be very, very strong, regroup overnight and move on quickly now.”
Asked whether he would turn to players he knows less well after relying on some old heads in Christchurch, Woodward said he had no regrets about his selection and was not about to make any rash decisions.
He also backed his selection of Jonny Wilkinson at inside-centre, calling his defence “outstanding”, but failing to mention that the midfield looked so blunt that it never threatened the New Zealand try-line. “I knew all 45 players — I’ve got to rethink things for next week. If I’ve made some errors I’ve got to own up to it, but I need to watch the tape back first,” he said.
“We got one or two tough calls early on, but you can’t go too overboard at this stage, but without the ball you can’t beat these guys.”
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Asked whether it was impossible for his side to win both the remaining Test matches and claim a series victory, Woodward said: “Nothing is impossible.”
Stand-in skipper Martin Corry was in no mood for excuses. “We were very poor, what more can you say? You’ve got to give credit to New Zealand, but we stuffed up, we had a bad day at the office,” said Corry. “It’s all very well saying what we’re going to do, we have to go out there and do it.
“We’re not looking to make excuses, but we can look over our shoulder at what might have been. It was a cruel blow to lose Brian but we can’t sit back and feel sorry for ourselves. We spilt far too much ball. It was tough out there with the wet weather but it was tough for both sides. This is a huge blow but we’ve got to take it on the chin. We know the standard we need and we fell below it.”
Wales flanker Ryan Jones said although the Lions were down after the defeat, the feeling in the camp was that they could turn it around in the second Test next weekend.
“The boys are extremely disappointed. By nature we are competitive people and it [the dressing room] is not a happy place at the moment,” he said.
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“We were outplayed and the better team won. They deserved to win. Next week is a different game. The conditions were pretty terrible but they adapted better than we did. We have world-class players but at the moment things aren’t clicking.”