Ken Borland

British and Irish Lions coach Warren Gatland said the squad was told before the tour to expect a couple of Covid cases within their camp and he is still absolutely sure that their Test series with the Springboks will still go ahead.

Gatland said they knew the key to their tour would be their ability to adapt and he believes the squad showed that in highly impressive fashion as they went on to the field at short notice against the Sharks and demolished them 54-7 at Ellis Park on Wednesday night.

The match against the Sharks was only confirmed as going ahead two hours before kickoff following a hectic day of testing and retesting for the Lions after the positive Covid tests for one player and one member of management, plus the isolation of their close contacts.

“I honestly believe we will have the Test series. Obviously there have been a few cases in the Springboks camp and we hope they get everything right in the next couple of weeks so we can have a good Test series. The medics said before we arrived in South Africa that we were likely to pick up a case or two and it will be all about how we deal with it. The last couple of days have been quite surreal and really challenging.

“I’m incredibly proud of how the team adjusted and, more than the result of the match, what I’m really pleased about is the togetherness of the group. My message to the team was ‘let’s use this as a positive, whatever is thrown at us, we can cope, it will not faze us’. Faced with potential chaos, we needed to adapt and change, that’s what we did and the players were outstanding,” Gatland said.

Although Gatland has made it clear none of his squad can consider themselves to have booked places in the Test team just yet, lock Iain Henderson, who captained the Lions against the Sharks, said there is no doubt players are taking their opportunities to show the selectors that they are ready to face the Springboks.

“This is an incredibly tight bunch of guys and you can see the team bonds are thriving. Everyone is trying their utmost to put their hand up and the team were able to carry out their roles excellently, even though we are still trying to get our breath at altitude. The scoreboard might not show it, but these have been two very tough games and the players are certainly making it challenging for the selectors.

“The way the guys carried themselves having to play at a moment’s notice, they could have made any number of excuses, but we made sure we kept on track with what we want to do on this tour. To pitch up the way we did after an unbelievably difficult day was great,” Henderson said.

Serviced by a steady flow of quick ball, British and Irish Lions fullback Josh Adams and wing Duhan van der Merwe both scored hat-tricks as the tourists hammered the Sharks 54-7 at Ellis Park on Wednesday night.

The Covid crisis surrounding this series meant the Lions had to make eight late changes to their originally announced team and they had just one backline reserve on the bench. It only seemed to fuel them to higher levels of excellence.

Playing with tremendous skill and tempo, the Lions were ruthless and clinical in scoring eight tries. Their aggressive defence took away much of the time and space the Sharks are used to normally and the tourists only conceded a single try.

The prolific Adams, who has now scored eight tries in three appearances for the Lions, and Van der Merwe both scored in the opening 10 minutes to immediately settle the tourists and banish all thoughts from their minds of the tremendous disruption they have suffered over the last 24 hours.

With Owen Farrell, one of the late changes at flyhalf, producing a tactical masterclass, the Lions scored two more tries before halftime to lead 26-0 at the break.

The Sharks scored first in the second half, flank James Venter rounding off a lovely try that featured slick work down the right touchline by Jeremy Ward, Werner Kok and Manie Libbok.

But then they ruined their promising moments with basic errors and soft moments, succumbing to the pressure exerted on them by a top-quality international side. The Lions scored four more tries, the last when they deliberately played with just 14 men. From a powerful scrum, Adams had space aplenty to complete is hat-trick.

It is highly unlikely that Sharks coach Sean Everitt sleeps well tonight. With their first foray into Europe a couple of months away, the Sharks were way off the pace. Clearly, playing against sluggish South African teams has got them into bad habits and a false sense of security.

Scorers

Sharks – Try: James Venter. Conversion: Curwin Bosch.

British & Irish Lions – Tries: Josh Adams (3), Duhan van der Merwe (3), Bundee Aki, Louis Rees-Zammit. Conversions – Owen Farrell (3), Finn Russell (4).

Covid hit the British and Irish Lions camp on Wednesday in what may well be the tipping point that sees the entire tour moved to Cape Town or called off completely.

The Lions management confirmed on Wednesday evening that a member of their management team as well as a player have tested positive and had gone into isolation, as had 12 close contacts – eight of whom are players. The entire touring party was then tested again on Wednesday and for several hours the match against the Sharks in Johannesburg on Wednesday night hung in the balance.

It was eventually played, but the fact that the virus has now penetrated the meticulously assembled Lions bubble is of grave concern and the entire series must now be in danger of being called off. The glimmer of hope that the organisers are no doubt hanging on to is that the tourists, with their weekend game against the Bulls in Pretoria already postponed, can now head to Cape Town where the number of Covid cases is much lower.

The Lions are scheduled to play the SA A team at the Cape Town Stadium next Wednesday and their only remaining fixtures in Gauteng would be the last two Tests. It now seems likely those will be moved to the Cape as well.

Quite who the hosts are going to be able to field in that SA A match and in the three Tests that start on July 24 is difficult to know. The Springboks camp has been hard-hit by Covid with 12 positive cases, including head coach Jacques Nienaber. There are currently seven players who are in isolation and, with the second Test against Georgia, scheduled for Friday night at Ellis Park, now cancelled, questions are being asked about what sort of preparation the Springboks will have before taking on the might of the Lions.

Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus may be forced into a situation where the SA A game, which was meant to be for the second-string South African side to take on the Lions, is now where the first-choice Springbok line-up has to play in order to get some game-time together before the Test series. Which would be most unfortunate for the fringe players in the national squad.

The Lions are also concerned about their preparation for the series bring disrupted and have reportedly been trying to find some opposition to replace the Bulls over the weekend. Georgia announced on Wednesday that they have half-a-dozen Covid cases in their camp as well, which is why they cannot stand in.

All rugby fans will be hoping that when the whole series moves to Cape Town, the situation will normalise and sport rather than a pandemic can take centre stage again.

The fact that the British and Irish Lions tour will be moving to Cape Town at the end of the week is ironically a beacon of hope for the Bulls that their match against the tourists might still happen, according to the franchise’s CEO Edgar Rathbone.

SA Rugby confirmed on Tuesday night that the Bulls’ match against the Lions scheduled for Loftus Versfeld on Saturday has, at this stage, been postponed due to four players and one member of the medical staff testing positive for Covid. It is now up to the Lions and SA Rugby to see if the match can be rescheduled.

Rathbone, while accepting that the matter is now out of the Bulls’ hands, is hopeful that the game will still go ahead. The Bulls, although they were arguably the best club team in the world back then, also did not get to play against the Lions in 2009 for what can only be described as some arcane SA Rugby in-house political issue when it came to drawing up the schedule.

“It’s a big disappointment for the players because they were very excited to play, but the positive, the good news for the players, is that it is not cancelled and at this stage they are looking at a postponement, so there is a bit of hope. It depends on the date fitting into both the Lions and Currie Cup schedules. The Lions only come every 12 years but the Currie Cup runs on log-points, so it’s a tight balance.

“One option is the Tuesday before the first Test [July 20], but we have three Currie Cup games in the space of just about a week then. Playing midweek games between Tests has not been scheduled before. But the tour is definitely not in jeopardy, the Sharks are already in their bubble and will play the Lions on Wednesday night.

“After that the Lions play against SA A and the Stormers in Cape Town where there are much lower Covid numbers. Logically, with the Lions then in their bubble in Cape Town, our game if rescheduled will most probably happen in the Cape,” Rathbone said on Tuesday night.

And it’s not as if the Bulls are an island of infectivity either, because SA Rugby have confirmed that four more Springbok players (Marvin Orie, Frans Steyn, Handre Pollard and Frans Malherbe) plus six of their management team, including head coach Jacques Nienaber, as well as four Georgia players, have tested positive.