Take A Front Row Seat, Shane

I don’t think there is a stranger sight in sport than a uncontested scrum. Sixteen large men uniting to create an inert phalanx for no other purpose than to restart the game. I know little of the murky practices of the pack, but to insert one’s head up into your colleague’s groinal regions just to stand there apologetically seems like an unnecessary embarassment.

Sadly for the Lions it also disarmed them of one their most potent weapons against the Springboks. I am not completely familiar with the etiquette of the replacements for the uncontested scrum but I couldn’t help wonder as I watched Alun Wyn Jones tramp onto the pitch whether the Lions management hadn’t missed a tactical trick. The rigid laws in rugger don’t allow for too many subtle changes in formation, but a Ronan O’Gara or Shane Williams might have put a cat among the muscular pigeons in the front row.

And when Brian O’Driscoll and Jamie Roberts wandered dazed off the battlefield, the Lions must have hoped for an uncontested match, let alone an uncontested scrum. Just a bit of pass the parcel down the three-quarter line and some pat-a-cake among the forwards would have fitted the bill. That’s how I used to play rugger.