Ch-ch-changes? Your team for the 2nd Test

[MrK]

Vunipola, George, Furlong, Itoje, Kruis, OBrien Tipuric, Faletau
Murray, Sexton, Watson, Teo, Davies, Daly, Williams

Owens, McGrath, Sinkler, Lawes, Stander, Webb, Farrell, Joseph

Front row stays, Itoje comes in, Tipuric comes in - will give NZ something more to think about from a ball carrying perspective
Tipuric will get to the breakdown quicker and slow down the ball, Itoje also adds somthing in that dept compared to AWJ..
Backs - straight swap Sexton in for Farrell

Struggling to pick a captain out of that lot mind.

[jngf]

Be keen to see a Lawes and Itoje at lock
with 6 O'Brien 7 Tipuric 8 Faletau combo and as a wild card use Haskell as a second row/back row impact carrier.

[p/d]

Vunipola, George, Furlong, Itoje, Kruis, OBrien Tipuric, Faletau
Murray, Sexton, Watson, Teo, Davies, Daly, Williams

Owens, McGrath, Sinkler, Lawes, Stander, Webb, Farrell, Joseph

Front row stays, Itoje comes in, Tipuric comes in - will give NZ something more to think about from a ball carrying perspective
Tipuric will get to the breakdown quicker and slow down the ball, Itoje also adds somthing in that dept compared to AWJ..
Backs - straight swap Sexton in for Farrell

Struggling to pick a captain out of that lot mind.

Yep, that's how I would see the team.

SCW will weep and stamp his feet but Sexton is tactically better the Farrell and linking with Murray can only be a good thing.

JJ on the bench is a must if we want to spice it up

[Banquo]

Be keen to see a Lawes and Itoje at lock
with 6 O'Brien 7 Tipuric 8 Faletau combo and as a wild card use Haskell as a second row/back row impact carrier.

oh my god, I've really seen the lot now. a- Haskell is just off the pace, b- second row replacement.
Cripes

[morepork]

Please bring the Hask in.

Lions have got some more in them but Gatland has to make the right selection calls. Farell is not doing that much wrong (apart from a few bad missed tackles) but is just a spare wheel out there. Conner Muray looks good but there is no continuity from the 8-9-10 axis. Liam Williams is keeping them in the hunt by playing with his head up. Watson looks dangerous whenever he gets the ball. Daly is fast, but is just so passive. He should have nailed that first try scoring opportunity.

[Mush]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/40396772

I finally agree with Clive Woodward, at least in terms of changing the tactics rather than keeping the same personnel.

We need more energy in the second row and the back row, so i would start Itoje and Tiporic and never, ever, ever move Farrell one out when he isn't having any positive influence in his favoured position.

[Eugene Wrayburn]

Something I've been admiring about the Kiwi teams of late is the speed of defensive realignment. It basically means that if you don't score from a break you are often back to square one as you discover the defensively line reformed just further up the field.

[WaspInWales]

Vunipola, George, Furlong, Itoje, Kruis, OBrien Tipuric, Faletau
Murray, Sexton, Watson, Teo, Davies, Daly, Williams

Owens, McGrath, Sinkler, Lawes, Stander, Webb, Farrell, Joseph

Front row stays, Itoje comes in, Tipuric comes in - will give NZ something more to think about from a ball carrying perspective
Tipuric will get to the breakdown quicker and slow down the ball, Itoje also adds somthing in that dept compared to AWJ..
Backs - straight swap Sexton in for Farrell

Struggling to pick a captain out of that lot mind.

Good team and I'd like to see that bench. Perhaps Russell for Farrell but that won't happen.

Can't see Gats taking Warbs out of the match day squad either.

[Lizard]

I think the Lions have more to gain by some continuity in selection and learning from the first test than by knee-jerk personnel changes.

[Saison]

Itoje to start with Lawes to the bench. Tipuric for Warburton. Sexton for Farrell. Joseph for Halfpenny, maybe even North if he starts looking like he's back to his best in training.

This. Having just got back from the first test I would also change a good proportion of the fans, having had a beer throuwn on me after our first try (and having had to go for a chat to the fella to suggest he may want to offer me a beer to apologise) and having come across more asshats after the game than pretty much anywhere else in the world - and that not being necessarily unusual in m y experiences in NZ! In the interest of balance there's also a lot of great folk of course and one of the young ladies I met at The Nightingale (I think?!) informed me that Kiwi girls have more partners than any other Nation in the World so overs and unders I guess *

* I didn't validate his as i'm v happily married - just a great insight.

[Saison]

"The All Blacks are beatable" is one of the stupidest fucking statements. Of course they are. England proved it, the Springboks proved it, the Wallabies proved it and Ireland proved it. What they did on Saturday, and what they often do, is they make it really, really, really, really, really insanely difficult to achieve that through fitness, speed, skills and most importantly, overwhelming defensive pressure. How many of the Lions turnovers (and I'm counting handling errors here) came from sheer pressure from the All Blacks? I remember reading an interesting stat during the RWC a couple of years ago, where it turned out that while the All Blacks weren't getting as many turnovers from the breakdown as, say, Australia, what they were doing was getting the ball back from an opposition knock-on roughly every 9th tackle - which is quite phenomenal when you consider that the next best team in that area had to go almost 20 tackles.

It wasn't so much as the Lions botching chances, it was just as much as the All Blacks strangling them out of said chances through the pressure they applied. Imagine if every time you had the ball, there's a solid wall of black running at you. That's what the Lions were forced to contend with.

They also think quicker than any other team on the planet. The first try being a good case in point.

[iLovett]

Boy would Billy V have made a difference to that first test... sure his cousin Toby is a better technical player, but we needed to make more impact down the middle... the NZ defence just wasn't sucked in.

We need identifiers spotting and communicating when the Blacks fwds don't pile into rucks/mauls to get the ball out quicker and plough down the middle... only then will our linebreaks be more fruitful

[Eugene Wrayburn]

Boy would Billy V have made a difference to that first test... sure his cousin Toby is a better technical player, but we needed to make more impact down the middle... the NZ defence just wasn't sucked in.

We need identifiers spotting and communicating when the Blacks fwds don't pile into rucks/mauls to get the ball out quicker and plough down the middle... only then will our linebreaks be more fruitful

In order to make impact down the middle you need to pass the ball rather than kick it.

[Banquo]

Boy would Billy V have made a difference to that first test... sure his cousin Toby is a better technical player, but we needed to make more impact down the middle... the NZ defence just wasn't sucked in.

We need identifiers spotting and communicating when the Blacks fwds don't pile into rucks/mauls to get the ball out quicker and plough down the middle... only then will our linebreaks be more fruitful

In order to make impact down the middle you need to pass the ball rather than kick it.

I'm with you on kicking, but the stats make interesting reading; we made more clean breaks than the AB's on much less ball (which was caused by over-kicking)....where we really struggled was a huge number of turnovers (and imo a fair few were unforced, not down to the 'black wall'), penalty count and support....plus the ABs are bloody good.

[Sandydragon]

Boy would Billy V have made a difference to that first test... sure his cousin Toby is a better technical player, but we needed to make more impact down the middle... the NZ defence just wasn't sucked in.

We need identifiers spotting and communicating when the Blacks fwds don't pile into rucks/mauls to get the ball out quicker and plough down the middle... only then will our linebreaks be more fruitful

If Billy V had the ball to do so then I would have agreed. Faletau wasn't doing much with ball in hand, largely as he was tackling and working hard at the breakdown. He became more prominent with ball in hand when Warburton arrived.

If we want a chance in the second test then we need to win quicker breakdown ball.

[Sandydragon]

Boy would Billy V have made a difference to that first test... sure his cousin Toby is a better technical player, but we needed to make more impact down the middle... the NZ defence just wasn't sucked in.

We need identifiers spotting and communicating when the Blacks fwds don't pile into rucks/mauls to get the ball out quicker and plough down the middle... only then will our linebreaks be more fruitful

In order to make impact down the middle you need to pass the ball rather than kick it.

I'm with you on kicking, but the stats make interesting reading; we made more clean breaks than the AB's on much less ball (which was caused by over-kicking)....where we really struggled was a huge number of turnovers (and imo a fair few were unforced, not down to the 'black wall'), penalty count and support....plus the ABs are bloody good.

We created more try scoring opportunities, but only managed 2 tries to their 3. Our composure was a huge problem for us.

Too much kicking winds me up as much as anyone, but the more annoying thing is often poor decision making.

[Banquo]

In order to make impact down the middle you need to pass the ball rather than kick it.

I'm with you on kicking, but the stats make interesting reading; we made more clean breaks than the AB's on much less ball (which was caused by over-kicking)....where we really struggled was a huge number of turnovers (and imo a fair few were unforced, not down to the 'black wall'), penalty count and support....plus the ABs are bloody good.

We created more try scoring opportunities, but only managed 2 tries to their 3. Our composure was a huge problem for us.

Too much kicking winds me up as much as anyone, but the more annoying thing is often poor decision making.

Combination of poor support and as you say composure/decision making. To beat the AB's you have to be spot on with everything, pretty much.

[skidger]

I see some of the papers are saying that Itoje and Warburton will come in which seems fair enough to me.

[Digby]

It's so often the case that any number of the stats say one was competitive with and even better than NZ, and yet somehow there's always the scoreboard

[Banquo]

It's so often the case that any number of the stats say one was competitive with and even better than NZ, and yet somehow there's always the scoreboard

true, its just interesting that we created maybe more chances than it seemed at the time; we dominated the lineout too, had respectable tackle stats. Yet we ceded too many turnovers and the tackle line...and possession.

[Banquo]

Boy would Billy V have made a difference to that first test... sure his cousin Toby is a better technical player, but we needed to make more impact down the middle... the NZ defence just wasn't sucked in.

We need identifiers spotting and communicating when the Blacks fwds don't pile into rucks/mauls to get the ball out quicker and plough down the middle... only then will our linebreaks be more fruitful

If Billy V had the ball to do so then I would have agreed. Faletau wasn't doing much with ball in hand, largely as he was tackling and working hard at the breakdown. He became more prominent with ball in hand when Warburton arrived.

If we want a chance in the second test then we need to win quicker breakdown ball.

similarly George had a massive tackle count; 20 to him, 21 to Faletau.

[Sandydragon]

I see some of the papers are saying that Itoje and Warburton will come in which seems fair enough to me.

Yup. AWJ's experience doesn't provide enough weight to miss out the dynamism that Itoje brings. I'm not sure that AWJ should be in the bench either.

I like all 3 back row players individually, but as a unit they just didn't work on Saturday. Faletau is a class act and whilst you could argue that Stander will bring in driving play, Faletau can do the same but the point is that to do that, they cant be trying to shore up the breakdown to such a large degree. SOB can make a dent but seemed less effective at the ruck than someone like Warburton. As harsh as it seems, POM (who I rate highly) is probably the person to make way for Warburton. The question is then what do you want off the bench? A big carrying capability (Stander or perhaps SOB if POM starts) or Tipuric.

I'd be tempted to leave the backline alone. Farrell wasn't great on Saturday, but has been in decent form during the tour, more so than Sexton of late. If the pack can give him better ball, will he play better -of course. I'm not convinced by the playing of both flyhalves at the same time - it works when the pack is dominant, but we are unlikely to have that level of dominance in a test match.

There was some speculation in the Western Mail about Gatland dropping WIlliams for Halfpenny. I really hope he doesn't. All of the back 3 made some mistake, but frankly it was an error ridden performance across the team and the back 3 caused the ABs some real problems. Brining in Halfpenny to shore up defence isn't going to win us any games.

[iLovett]

Boy would Billy V have made a difference to that first test... sure his cousin Toby is a better technical player, but we needed to make more impact down the middle... the NZ defence just wasn't sucked in.

We need identifiers spotting and communicating when the Blacks fwds don't pile into rucks/mauls to get the ball out quicker and plough down the middle... only then will our linebreaks be more fruitful

In order to make impact down the middle you need to pass the ball rather than kick it.

As I'm sure you well know, a balance is needed.

My point is that Billy would have done a little more trucking pulling in a few more defenders, facilitating a wider game... if the blacks keep out wide, pick and go up the middle. Losing some of the gainline contact (that billy would have undopubtedly won a little more of) keeps the blacks back, as it was, we were often consumed by a progressive line

[Mikey Brown]

Please bring the Hask in.

Hang on, is this sarcasm? You're not terrified of his jittery, upright "impact carrying" or his new-found ability to play lock (?!?!?!?!?!?) at test level vs New Zealand, in New Zealand?

[ALunpg]

I agree with replacing AWJ but additionally I believe it should be both locks with Lawes and Itoje in and with Kruis on the bench but will accept Lawes on the bench.

As for back 3 they need to up their defensive game as they created one and let in three. I would not change them as they can offer the most potent attack but a real rollicking is in order.

But the whole shooting match relies on better performance in two key places ..the contact area and kicking.

We were too slow at the contact area on both sides of the ball in defence and attack.We didn't create fast first phase enough as the AB capability to realign is superb the only chance is to push them three or four phases of speed and even then it will be blydu hard .
So do you say let's go attack them ..if so Tipuric and O'Brien with Warburton or Stander on the bench.If not start as we did.

Then...we come to the box kicking. ... there is no disguise to it ..no suprise to it and guess what some of the chasing was substandard so why do it so damn much !!!. I wouldn't mind if we set it up then didn't do it it may catch someone unawares. at the present it has few virtues.

Neither Sexton nor Farrell have looked the part at 10 it looks laboured and plodding. It's a sign of the lack of performance that even Biggar looks in line

So I would say role the dice and put Sexton to start and Russel on the bench ..but from my understanding sadly for Russel he will be on a plane Wednesday unless someone gets injured along with the other bench warmers brought over.

So it will be Sexton to start and Farrell to come on at 10.

It is all fixable ..but it comes down to execution ..we didn't execute some of the basics rIght and our stupid penalty count was as bad as it has been all tour and lastly . somehow...we need to take the right options and not panic. ..but that is easy to write anharder to do..

There is one thing for sure if the Lions do not up the performance at the contact area and the defence it could be a long day at the office as Barrett will play at 10 for the match and pull those strings to greater effect .