What a farewell to Test rugby for Nic White. The 73-times capped Wallaby scrum half wasn’t involved in either of the first two Tests. Yet here he was, leapfrogging Tate McDermott, the replacement scrum half who did such a fine job as an early substitute for the injured wing, Harry Potter, in Melbourne. Jake Gordon, who wore the No9 jersey for the rest of the second Test and also started the first one, was dropped from the match-day squad.
White, the feisty Western Force pivot, could not have been any more central to a Test match than he was in the series finale in Sydney. For the 58 minutes he was on the pitch he was, above all, an irritant that had the British & Irish Lions focused more on the moustachioed scrapper than their own game and its unfixed inaccuracies.
Jamison Gibson-Park has deserved praise for his part in the series win but in Sydney he was squeezed off centre stage. With his gigantic attendant, Will Skelton, shoving anything in red within reach of his hands, the Lions lost whatever poise they had recovered in the nick of time to win the second Test last weekend.
White showed his fighting qualities in his first match in the series — and his last in Test rugby
CAMERON SPENCER/GETTY IMAGES
White kicked the touring side on to the back foot. There was no shelter from the raging storm or his ferocious desire to wind up the Lions and win. It was the sort of rainy day on which, so we are told, forwards win games. That is both true and false. The tacticians and kickers need the possession and quality of ball that only their big mates can provide. But if the pack see their hard-won possession wasted — for example, five stolen lineouts which gave Dan Sheehan a more mortal look — the muscular supremacy can all be in vain.
Australia’s bush-ranging bandit of a scrum half could have been running with Ned Kelly and the boys. He bowed to no one. Australia — the bullied in Brisbane — were the bullies. The 15-7 lead, in the conditions, was going to be harder to pull back than last week’s 23-5 first-half deficit at the MCG.
It was as sharp a piece of selection as you could wish to witness, especially as his replacement changed the pace of the Wallabies’ game and added incision where there had previously been control. The only man to rival White in terms of influence was the man who replaced him. McDermott is the quickest, most muscular and threatening scrum half in the southern hemisphere. In the first Test he galvanised the Australians too late in the day. In Melbourne he looked like an international wing, spending most of the match there as a replacement.
Introducing McDermott just before the hour, despite White’s excellence, was a masterstroke from Schmidt
DAVID ROGERS/GETTY IMAGES
Had he been given the 20 minutes or so he received in Sydney behind the Wallaby pack, I can’t help but feel that Joe Schmidt’s men would have won the Test and set up a decider.
Eight minutes after entering the fray McDermott came up with that low, driving run of his around the fringe. A Lions penalty was reversed when the TMO spotted Jac Morgan — Australia’s colonial villain from Melbourne — tackling the replacement scrum half around the neck. The Wallabies wouldn’t go away. They buffeted away near the tryline until McDermott dummied and drove low through three hulking Lions forwards for what was effectively the clinching try at 22-7.
Three minutes later, deep in his own 22, McDermott produced a textbook clearance to alleviate any lingering threat of a late Lions comeback. From a poorly directed Lions lineout (which struggled before and after the head injury assessment that took Maro Itoje out of the game) he devoured Alex Mitchell. It summed up the ravenous nature of his game. Was it the right thing to substitute White, the match’s most influential figure, just before the hour? Absolutely. This was Schmidt at his decisive best.
Tupou, who is heading to Racing 92, also played an enormous part up front
MARK METCALFE/GETTY IMAGES
But was it wise to select Gordon for the first two Tests? The decision to drop him suggests that the head coach’s bold move was, alas for Australia, too little, too late. The decision here only exaggerated the errors of selection in the first two Tests.
One wonders whether Schmidt’s decision to ignore Paris-bound forward Taniela Tupou was another colossal mistake. The tight-head prop, by his own admission, hasn’t been at his best this season but he showed plenty of his trademark power against the Lions for the First Nations & Pasifika XV. Coming off the bench in Melbourne might have provided the class and the clout to hang on to the aforementioned 23-5 lead.
This is a column full of “ifs” and “buts”. When all is done, the only fact is the Lions’ series win. Schmidt will have to silently suffer, wondering if he got his selection wrong. But what these undeniable imponderables do is destroy the silly talk of this being a great Lions side. All this talk of “going beyond the beyond” was always an impossible journey. Greatness demands a challenge which was beyond Australia. That it is feasible to think of Australia as heavy-hitting series losers dismisses woolly talk of comparisons with the 1974 Lions.
Andy Farrell’s side won the series but Australia’s limited challenge put a slight dampener on the achievement
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
Actually, a Lions series win is not the only fact. There is also the defeat against Argentina. They played four international matches, won two and lost two. That is a fact, whereas the weakness of Australian opposition I willingly argue.
Still, I’m glad the Lions won the series. Glad as a former Lion, glad for the thousands of fabulous fans who turn tours into religious pilgrimages, glad — above all — for the players who just want to get on with the business of playing and having a bloody good party to celebrate the series win, not their place on some non-existent pantheon.
But deep down I’m glad they didn’t win 3-0. They didn’t play good enough opponents and they didn’t play good enough rugby to be turned by others into some marketed mythology.