The Unexpected

I never thought the series would come down to one thing: An inability to gather aimless kicks. The NH has long been very good at this aspect of play, better than us. Aerial dominance has been a Bok weakness for eleven years, but now we face an opponent who time and again cannot field easy shallow high balls. This makes both sides look like tier 3 teams, a cripple fight even. The second test was supposedly where the Boks opened up, but time and again they were clueless, moving laterally without any kind of plan until the short sequence ended in a hack upfield and a cluster of players straining to track this poor ball and latch onto it. The Lions are poor under the high ball, but so too are our boys. We just hope for a knock on and penalties or a bobbling ball to fall into our laps, such as the three balls that literally fell into a bewildered Damian's arms. That has been the totality of what we have to offer. Our big carriers have been well handled, our set plays look like poorly programmed AI by EASport, skills and vision ugly to the sight. If our fans truly think we've developed, they are not just wrong, but dishonest to the point where they have questionable character. This has been a series of truly ugly and poor rugby. I expected the Boks to be poor, but to see the Lions succumb all easily to something so basic and weak itself has been very unexpected. 

1 Clean break and 5 tackles beaten for the whole team. Pretty dismal.

Now we have the normal from the Kindergarten Imbecile - the Springboks was so poor the Lions were even poorer.   This is the kind of garbage  only idiots would come up with.         

To be fair, the Lions vs ABs series was way better at two games in. 

It actually felt like one was watching the best of the best. 

It pains me to say that but one has to at least make an attempt at objectivity...once a year. 

I've been watching old Lions tour games. This series the worst I've ever seen. 

You have been watching matches and missed out on 75% to 90% of what really happened in matches  regularly as is normal with you ?

I know more of what happened in these games than you have the capacity to comprehend. I mean that literally. 

The 2001 series was epic. The 2009 and 2013 and 2017 series were better. The 2005 series was boring, but at least the All Blacks played well. We now have two ex-All Black coaches commenting on the dour quality. 

What I saw in the aerial game was a lot of tapping back from the Lions….Duhan for example.  The tap was mostly successful, but at times too aggressive, the ball went back 10/15 metres and was often gathered by a Bok. 

It was a disappointing Test with regards the Lions. No ability in the air and aimless kicking. Bigger only passed three times for goodness sake !