McGeechan picked too many veterans and chose wrong captain

Published on Friday 24 April 2009 22:11

NATURAL disappointment at the tiny Scottish representation in the Lions squad is made all the sharper by the thought that it looks like the weakest Lions party since the 1960s. It's difficult to see them winning one Test, let alone the series. They will be overpowered and outpaced in the back row, and probably cleaned out at the line-out. Fifteen to 11 should be all right, but the half-backs look flakey.

In 1955 the Lions selectors boldly decided to take nobody of 30 or over, even if this meant excluding the great Jackie Kyle. Eleven of Ian McGeechan's squad would have been omitted if the same criterion had been applied. Admittedly players last longer in the professional game – amateurs of 30 were usually well-advanced in their off-field career. It is also true that England won the World Cup with their 'Dad's Army'. Nevertheless, there are too many veterans past their best in this squad.

We are told form was a deciding factor in selection, but form, as we all know, fluctuates. If the team had been selected after the autumn internationals, the names of Mike Blair, Ross Ford, Ryan Jones and Shane Williams would have been near the top of the list. Only Williams of that quartet is going, though he too had an indifferent Six Nations.

But if some players' form dipped between November and February/March, others will not be playing as well in June as they were in the spring. In any case here, too, there has been inconsistency: Mike Phillips, the Wales and Ospreys' scrum-half, has scarcely been in good form, but he will be on the plane. Form is a tricky basis for selection. Australia's cricket selectors, among the most consistently successful in sport, have always held to the adage, "form is temporary, class is permanent."

In any case – to be mischievous – if you were going by form, you might have sacked the coaches and given the job to Ireland's Declan Kidney, for Wasps (McGeechan and Shaun Edwards) and Wales (Warren Gatland and Edwards) have both fallen away this year.

Incidentally, I would think there is indignation in those English clubs whose players – Tom Croft, Toby Flood, Delon Armitage and Nick Easter, for instance – have been ignored while Wasps, lying eighth in the Guinness Premiership, have four men in the Lions party. It's natural for coaches to choose the players they know best – something which has worked against the Scots – but Riki Flutey is perhaps the only Wasp whom an independent panel of selectors would have chosen.

We have also been told that McGeechan & Co have gone for "proven winners". Since rugby is a team game, this works against some individuals and for other ones. Tomas O'Leary, one of the three scrum-halves who have edged out Mike Blair and Chris Cusiter, has certainly looked very good behind the Munster pack; but then who wouldn't?

In the days when Hawick's Green Machine was in good working order, Hawick scrum-halves were almost never capped for Scotland, the selectors taking the sensible view that it was one thing to play behind the Hawick pack, quite another behind the Scotland one.

As for picking winners, even if you set aside Wasps' poor form this season, it's a surprise to find six Ospreys in the squad, for five of them were in the team that surrendered so abjectly and humiliatingly to Munster two weeks ago in the Heineken Cup quarter-finals. Would they all be on their way to South Africa if Gatland and Edwards weren't coaching Wales? I doubt it.

In truth, each of the four nations has had at least one miserable match this season: Scotland against Wales, England against South Africa, Ireland against New Zealand (the worst international I have seen in years) and Wales against Italy, a game which they deserved to lose, but just scraped home.

And while Ireland have deservedly won the Grand Slam, one can't forget how feebly the core of the same team performed in the World Cup less than two years ago. The winning habit comes and goes, just like form.

The Lions selection suggests they will play a narrow game and kick for position a lot. McGeechan has a considerable reputation as an innovative and imaginative backs coach, but few of his teams have actually played expansive rugby.

In South Africa in 1997 they did so in provincial games but not in the Tests. The decisive second Test was won – remember? – 18-17 – by five penalties and a drop goal to three tries, only one of them converted. And though he lured Gregor Townsend to Northampton, he played him in the centre as often as not, preferring to have a kicking fly-half, Paul Grayson, controlling the game.

Finally I suspect they have the wrong captain and that the job should have gone to Brian O'Driscoll, if only because Paul O'Connell is likely to have a hard time of it in his primary role in the line-out where he will be up against Victor Matfield and Bakkes Botha, the best in the world.