How do you beat the Lions? We asked five coaches who’ve had a crack so far

For the most part, the British and Irish Lions have looked formidable in their tour matches in Australia and are, accordingly, rated strong favourites to beat the Wallabies in the first Test in Brisbane on Saturday.

But as Waratahs coach Dan McKellar stressed to his team before they played the Lions, and finished just 11 points shy of an upset win: “They’re good rugby players, but they’re human beings”. In other words, they’re capable of being beaten.

So how do the Wallabies do that? We asked the five coaches who’ve spent the past month trying to figure out how.

Les Kiss (Reds and AUNZ) - No easy moments

“You’ve got to be switched on always. They just seem to have a sense of being able to sniff a moment and make you pay for it straight away.

“It’s the quick line-out, the front of the line-out throw. Any loose ball, they seem to be first on it. You’ve just got to be able to fight for those little scraps, those moments, but not give easy access into the situations where they can build momentum. You have to be switched on always.

Huw Jones streaks away to score for the Lions against the Reds.Credit: Getty Images

“It’s something that they probably missed a little bit in that first game against Argentina, but you can see each game, on game, they’re just ready for every moment. And when they take those moments, they’re bloody clinical. They do finish them off. It’s impressive.”

Ian Foster (All Blacks in 2017, and AUNZ) - Discipline is the key

“In Lions series, if there’s lots of pressure it comes down to your discipline. You saw a team (AUNZ in Adelaide) we were combative but when we got squeezed under a bit of pressure we lost our discipline and I think we got penalised nine times in that third quarter. You can’t do that against a team like that.

Henry Pollock of British & Irish Lions runs with the ball against AUNZ.Credit: Getty Images

“If you just keep allowing them to pressure you and get you into the 22, and the Lions will hurt you if that happens.

“There’s got to be a real focus for both teams when things aren’t going your way you can’t let people have another shot at you just by giving them an easy penalty.”

Dan McKellar (Waratahs) - Force them to play off slow ball

“We wanted to present a different picture defensively and really go after them with our line speed and put them under pressure and take away their time and space, because I’ve said it a number of times is that they’re good rugby players, but they’re human beings.

“If you take away time and space and put them under pressure, then normally errors will come off the back of it and certainly when they haven’t had to deal with it, they’ve then got to come up with solutions on the spot and that’s not always easy.

Sione Tuipulotu of the British and Irish Lions takes on the Waratahs defence.Credit: Getty Images

“Then off the back of our defence and winning that collision, we wanted to go hard at their breakdown.

“The reality is that the Lions are playing very similar to Ireland, and if you let Ireland get into that flow state where they’ve got good, quick ball, they can just play on top of you, they’re hard to defend.

“So what you’ve got to do is ideally turn them over at the breakdown, but if you can’t turn them over, force them to commit extra numbers and force them to play off slow ball and then if they’re playing off slow ball, that again allows you to go hard with your line speed and continue to put them under pressure.”

Simon Cron (Force and AUNZ) - Slow the ruck, and speed up the ruck

“Number one is you’ve got to slow their ruck speed. So that starts with your contact zone and winning into those contacts, and then second actions in the breakdown.

Dylan Pietsch of the Force looks to avoid being tackled.Credit: Getty Images

“Because when they’re on top and they’ve got quick ruck speed, that’s where they start to create opportunities for themselves.

“And then, funnily enough, reversing that in attack. Get your ruck speed up, and that means low body height, low ball carry height. You’ve got to make sure you use your feet, create weak shoulders so they can’t get double shoulders. If you’re high, they will slow it down and they’ll also get on top.

“The other two things you’ve got to be really smart on is one is transition speed. They are very quick to transition on any sort of scraps. So if you turn the ball over, kill it or you’ve got to make sure you connect fast defensively because they swing all their team to one side. The third one have to look at your kick strategy.

“I think there’s opportunities around controlling territory with kick strategy. I don’t feel like they’ve been as great in their high ball receipts and then in their long field kicking as good as they could be.”

Ben Mowen (Brumbies assistant) - Head between the spokes, pressure Finn Russell

“The Lions are a highly-drilled, skilled team, but they’re still trying to establish cohesion. So, if you sit back and let them find it, they’re going to be good enough to do that.

Hudson Creighton of the Brumbies celebrates scoring a try,Credit: Getty Images

“We spoke about putting our heads between the spokes, which in our terms is you’ve got to be able to put your head over the ball and compete.

“We spoke a lot through the week about the elite No.10s in the world and how they need a metre of space at the line to make a decision, (Finn) Russell probably needs just half a metre, he’s that good.

“When you come off the line (to defend) you take your first three metres really aggressively and then most teams will want to balance out and we just cannot give him time to balance out.

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“We did a lot of work over the couple of weeks, just on continuous line speed and being aggressive in that space and then backing your inside shoulder connection.

“He’s (Russell) obviously a very, very talented guy that can let that ball go late at the line, so what we can’t do is let him dig into our line, we have to dig into him and we would have liked to have done it more.

“There were definitely occasions there where you think, yeah, we could have put a lot more pressure on him there.”

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