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Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University of Wellington Students Assn. Volume 40 Number 12. May 30th 1977
Sport
Sport
Rugby
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Sport
The Lions have now played three games in New Zealand. It is still a little early to make judgement on their abilities, but already there is a sense of disappointment as to their performances to date.
Certainly they handled the mud at Masterton extraordinarily well, but their performances at Napier and Gisborne were not up to standard. Nevertheless, the first three games of a tour are always difficult ones as the 1963 All Blacks and the 1972 All Blacks will testify when they were beaten by Newport and Llanelli respectively.
However neither Hawkes Bay nor Poverty Bay/East Coast could hope to match the strength of the famous Welsh Cubs which brought about the downfall of the All Blacks in 63 and 72. A truer test of the Lions ability will be against Taranaki this Saturday, a team which incidentally ran up over 40 points last year against Poverty Bay.
To date though a number of weaknesses have yet to be resolved. The fullbacks, particularly Irvine, and the wingers have shown great dislike at taking the high ball. There has been a certain degree of panic amongst the inside backs when they have been subject to pressure from opposing loose forwards. The covering of the loose for wards of the Lions hasn't been what one would expect from an international side. I think also that a side that is supposed to be famous for its mauling has also been disappointing, particularly against the Hawkes Bay side. However, with hard work, I believe that many of these faults will be ironed out before the test matches.
The Lions to date have yet to develop a true general in their play. In the 1971 Lions team, Barry John and Mike Gibson were superb at their ability to direct and general the play of the Lions. Phil Bennett didn't play at Napier and has the ability to fulfill the role played by John in the earlier tour. One suspects though that this Lions team may still miss the individual talents of players like J.P.R. Williams, Gerald Davies and Gareth Edwards who had that little bit extra which separates a good player from a great player, and also adds that ingredient of individual greatness which is required for the winning of a test match.
Soccer
The New Zealand soccer team added another good performance to their fine effort against Australia recently, when they defeated Luton Town this week. Once again Keith Nelson made the difference when he scored 2 goals. One suspects that the New Zealand side of 2 years ago would have lost this match because of their inability to take their goal scoring opportunities, but for the first time in New Zealand soccer, we have a genuine striker in Nelson.
Staying with soccer, one can't talk about sport this week without commenting on the FA Cup Final. Although feeling a little sorry for Liverpool, so close to their 'treble', I was delighted with the Uniteds win. This match certainly showed up the differing styles of the 2 teams. United reflects a European style of football more than the traditional English style, where they used massed defences, often not bothering to contest the battle for possession in the mid-field and rely on fast breakaways down each wing through the individual abilities of Steve Coppell and Gordon Hill. Liverpool on the other hand typified British football with the long slow build ups of their attack, strong mid-field players, and the running off of players like Keegan and Keighway.
I thought Liverpool probably did enough to win, but they spent so much of the time covering Coppell and Hill that they forgot the tenacity and skills of Stuart Pearson and Jimmy Greenhoff. In fact it it hadn't been for about 3 fractional off sides against Pearson, he may well have scored further goals. I thought that Stepney was value for money, particularly with his ability to avert trouble for United with his taking of high crosses from Heighway, Neal and Callaghan.
All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable match, hard, fast and, and above all, incident free. If one was able to stay up until 4 in the morning, the crowds were good entertainment with their singing. It was somewhat ironic that United fans stole Liverpool theme song at the finish but that's football.
- Our man in the stands.
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