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SA 26 - 21 Lions

 

5 mins left

 

Sky Sports 1

 

We've been outclassed but a massive fightback is on!

 

thought they were superb in the last 20 minutes ish

 

although south africa did take all there best players off

 

a lot to build on though for next week

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I know nothing of the Lions, so I read the wiki.... I don't get it - can they only select uncapped players or not?

 

No Ack... its the best players from the Home Nations and Ireland. The selection is at the discretion of the Lions coach, but 90% of the squad will be the best players from the national sides.

 

Its like if great Britain had a football team... except the best players arent all English.. quite the opposite really....

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No Ack... its the best players from the Home Nations and Ireland. The selection is at the discretion of the Lions coach, but 90% of the squad will be the best players from the national sides.

 

Its like if great Britain had a football team... except the best players arent all English.. quite the opposite really....

Cool, just 'cause Wiki reads:

The Lions generally select international players; they can pick uncapped players available to one of the four Home Unions, but in recent[update] years this has rarely occurred.

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Lions played well but were beaten in the line out and beaten unfairly (but not spotted) in the scrum. We lost the breakdown battle until Williams came on. Surprisingly we mudered them in the 3/4 and broke their line many times. Yes, we were soundly beaten until 20 minutes to go and they took all thier subs off (strange how some of them came back on though). But with a decent ref who can understand what the tv official is saying and knows the rules about scrummaging we wouldn't have lost in the end. The ref was appalling penalising the Lions in the first half but when the Saffers were doing the same thing in the second half they got away with it (scrum wise). When we had that spell towards the end he should have sent at least one Saffer to the bin (if not more). Its quite simple, a Southern Hemisphere ref always seems to benefit the Southern Hemisphere teams until this discrepancy is sorted out Southern Hemisphere teams will keep winning the major tournaments.

 

In a 3 match series winning the first game is important but not absolutely necessary. I think the coaching team got their team wrong, Vickery was very poor in the scrums- although I thought it wouldn't matter as I didn't think the Saffer front row was as good as it was in the scrums, and I think Martyn Williams should have played. We shall see if any unforced changes are made for the second test (Byrne is highly doubtful).

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To be picked for the Lions you don't have to have played for England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland previously. I think the last uncapped player to go on tour was Will Greenwood in 97 and he probably would have played in the last test match (we had already won the series) if he hadn't nearly died 10 days before. In the old days before subs were so common it was much more common because one nation might well have had 3 of the four best players availible in one position but only 2 could play.

Edited by rudemedic
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