Injuries affect tourists’ first test plans

Press, 27 May 1983, Page 20

Injuries affect tourists’ first test plans

NZPA staff correspondent Palmerston North The selection melting pot of the Lions, which they hope will be simmering nicely as they prepare to meet the All Blacks in Christchurch in a week’s time, was sputtering slightly yesterday.

There was a growing casualty list and problems of combination. In their first four matches, the coach, Jim Telfer, and manager, Willie John Mcßride, have been looking for the right mix for a successful test side. On Wednesday against Wellington, they found a new ingredient — character. Mr Mcßride was forced to admit, however, after naming the Lions team to meet Manawatu tomorrow, that the one constituent which will bind all the others — combination — had yet to be found in sufficient quantities. “Three or four matches into a tour like this one we should be finding our understanding and we should be beginning to work closely together,” he said. “I think there has been a hint of that in our last couple of matches — there has been more of a suggestion of a pattern developing and there has been a feeling that we’re beginning to knit together.” The importance of the Manawatu match to the Lions build-up is shown by the powerful combination they have named. Ten of the players who opposed Wellington as part of a shadow test side have been kept iit, winning their final chances to impress the tour selectors before the announcement of the Lions test side. Five players selected for tomorrow who did not take part in Wednesday’s match are also clear test chances — save perhaps the right wing, Trevor Ringland — and need only impress oh Saturday to edge out rivals, for what appear to be most

fiercely contested test positions. In the front row the tour captain, Ciaran Fitzgerald, and the tighthead prop, Graham Price, complete what might, in their cases, be the formalities of test selection. Price, on this tour, has not been the dynamic player New Zealanders have come to expect, but nor has he been a spent force. His experience and Fitzgerald’s qualities of motivation should carry both through. On the loosehead side, however, a Welshman, lan Stephens, has the opportunity to edge his national team-mate, Staff Jones, out of the test reckoning. Jones began as the touring front runner for the test place but Stephens, taller and, therefore, a greater force in the line-outs, eroded Jones’s lead with a fine performance against Bay of Plenty. At the back of the scrum another battle is developing between the Scottish No. 8, John Beattie and lain Paxton. Paxton has the selectors’ nod tomorrow and after an indifferent performance by Beattie at Wellington, he has a rare opportunity to impress. The composition of the Lions test backline will be most interesting, however. Their midfield is still as hazy in composition as the All Black one and on Saturday the spotlight falls on the Welshman, Robert Ackerman — like Jones a frontrunner for a test place early in the tour but one who will need a good performance to revive the selectors’ interest. Mike Kiernan, tomorrow’s centre, and his Irish teammate, David Irwin, showed

commendable combination in the mid-field against Wellington and both are leading test prospects unless Ackerman can sway the selectors’ thinking. Closer to the scrum, the Scottish half-back, Roy Laidlaw, has the chance to cause the major upset of the Lions’ test selection by displacing his favoured Welsh counterpart, Terry Holmes. Laidlaw’s performance as Holmes’s replacement on Wednesday was outstanding. His passing was crisp and his elusive running from the base of the scrum a constant nuisance for the Wellington defence. With Holmes’s added burden of injury — he had seven stitches in head wounds after the Wellington match and may be unable to play for a week — Laidlaw’s hopes look brighter still. One more player with a selection boat to row tomorrow is the Irish fullback, Hugo Mac Neill, all but a test player before his indifferent performance against Wellington. Mac Neill will need to restore the selectors’ faith in his defensive steadiness if he is to displace the Englishman, Dusty Hare, in the first test line-up. The Lions team is: Hugo Mac Neill; Trevor Ringland, Michael Kiernan, Robert Ackerman, Roger Baird, Ollie Campbell; Roy Laidlaw; lain Paxton; Peter Winterbottom, Robert Norster, Maurice Colclough, Jeff Squire; lan Stephens, Ciaran Fitzgerald (captain), Graham Price. Reserves.— Forwards: Colin Deans, Nick Jeavons, lain Milne. Backs: Gwyn Evans, John Rutherford and one to be named.