British & Irish Lions news: Andy Farrell’s disjointed team beaten by Argentina in Dublin warm-up

It was a classic disjointed British & Irish Lions performance in Dublin on Friday as Andy Farrell’s charges came unstuck against an ever-improving Argentina, losing 28-24 to Felipe Contepomi and co.

The question now is: How worried should Farrell and Lions fans be about defeat to the fifth-best team in the world?

Here, Sports News Blitz writer Jacob Garrett reviews the game at the Aviva.

Set-piece struggles

One of the most difficult jobs for a new-look team is the timing from throw to lift in the lineouts.

For a hooker, the knowledge of how high and how quickly a teammate jumps comes from a lot of reps in training – after a while, the placement and timing simply become second nature.

But for Luke Cowan-Dickie, the timing was very much off, with the Englishman missing four out of nine throws against Los Pumas for a poor 44% completion rate.

Three of his efforts were over-throws, while one went under the jumper and led to an Argentinian steal.

Throwing has never been Cowan-Dickie’s super strength, to be fair, as play in the loose is much closer to his unique selling point, but his throwing has massively improved lately, although his lineouts in Dublin did not reflect that.

It is also important to note the great work that Argentina did at the lineouts, where Saracen Juan Martin González was a real linchpin in disrupting the Lions’ balls due to his height of 6 ft 3 and weight of around 100kg.

In terms of the other primary set piece, the scrum, we saw a really solid display from both Englishmen Ellis Genge and Finlay Bealham.

The two were solid in the fight and even gained supremacy at times to provide the back line with some quality ball.

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Attacking issues

Many were excited to see such a stacked Lions side selected by Farrell, especially the backline which had a mouth-watering centre partnership of Bundee Aki and Sione Tuipulotu.

However, that excitement did not live up to expectations.

Due to several handling issues, which were labelled “unacceptable” by Farrell, the Lions never truly got motoring when it came to extended periods of attacking pressure.

Captain Maro Itoje described the performance as “too tippy-tappy”, highlighting how his side often looked to go from one edge to the other rather than looking to punch through Los Pumas’ defence with quality and aggressive ball carrying.

It is interesting to note that one of the Lions’ tries came via a furious carry from Genge in the midfield, which generated fast ball for Tomos Williams who, after a phase, put through a delightful flat miss‑pass for Irish lock Tadhg Beirne to score.

Elsewhere, much of the Lions’ attack was stifled by small errors with the timing of passes.

For Tuipulotu’s disallowed try, the team played a lovely set move: A throw to the tail drew in the whole Argentinian pack before Alex Mitchell went wide to Aki, who pulled the pass back to his nine looping around, thus allowing Mitchell to release the ball for Tuipulotu to dot down under the sticks.

Unfortunately, the Northampton Saints star offered the final pass a split second too late and knocked on during a half‑tackle, resulting in the play being cancelled.

That sort of thing is, of course, completely natural for a new-look team as it takes time for ball-players to fully understand how their teammates like passes and kicks to be delivered.

Ultimately, it will be interesting to see how the Lions’ attack evolves over the course of the tour, with timing sure to become quicker and less error-filled as players play and train more together.

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Defensive shortcomings

In much the same vein as attack, defence relies a lot on cohesion and timing, with the connection between a player and those on his inside or outside paramount when facing quality opposition such as Argentina.

This is where the Lions truly fell short in Dublin, and the best example of such a lack of connection was in the all-important final Argentinian try.

As Los Pumas looked to progress through their fly-half, Tom Curry flew up to charge down the kick and fellow back‑rower Henry Pollock slowed down his defensive pressure in anticipation of the return kick.

The Argentine kicker realised this and dummied his way around Curry before fending off a half‑turned Pollock to glide through the midfield and set up the try via a grubber through the left edge.

Despite being countrymen, both Pollock and Curry responded to the exit kick in different ways, thus creating a gap for the opposition to exploit.

This is, once again, a perfectly normal issue when creating a new team – two players, from two separate clubs, having contrasting mindsets for certain scenarios.

There were a few more instances where that lack of connection was clear, especially in the back-three when Argentina found grass with probing kicks, but cohesion comes with time and Farrell will have some of that in the coming weeks.

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