Lions hardly convincing

[WCE2000]

hey Dipper, your "mighty" British Lions lacked a bit of roar out there tonight.

Playing against the 3rd best state team in the land which had it best 6 players not playing, and you still only won by 17.

Fairly unconvicging with the test just around the corner.

 

[Dipper]

Well it wasn't as convincing as it might have been but the game lost a lot of it's flow after the sending off & sin binnings.It seemed pretty obvious that NSW wanted to rough us up but if they (or the Wallabies) want a bit of biff then I reckon we'll be more than happy to oblige.
What does worry me a great deal is that
i)We've lost about 6 players to injury now for the whole tour & not just squad players but some of the best players we've got,especially Luger the no.1 wing & Dallagio who at his best is one of the best no8/blind side flankers int he world.
ii)The game down there is refereed in a totally different way to up here & it's hurting us badly.Firstly all the Aussie coaches (Maqueen,Jones,Dwyer) have come out into the press saying that the Lions are a dirty side, that we're constantly infinging at the rucks, mauls & on the opponents line out.The idea is obviously to prejudice the referees way of thinking which seemed to work with the guy on Saturday but hopefully in the Tests with foreign refs it won't.One of the passes in one of the NSW tries was so far forward I couldn't believe it & we were getting the rough end of the stick on a lot of other close calls.What's the story with the scrums down there?It seems as if you guys want uncontested Rugby League scrums where the team putting the ball in nearly always win it-up here we like the scrum to be a battle for the ball where both teams have a chance of coming away with it.

Still I'm not as confident as I was at the beggining but we'll have to see.I'm still looking forward to the series as much as ever & ...er......may the best side win.