Lions 2017: 7 & 8

Given how much I love rugby my state of ennui following last Saturday's first test comes as rather a surprise. The match was full of red-blooded endeavour and the Lions scored that magnificent try, but the truth is that the outcome was a product of that great enemy of top-class sport - inevitability. At no stage did I think it likely that the Lions would win.

The All Blacks are superb - they have taken basic skills and learned to perform them at pace and at the point of physical exhaustion. The experience for an opposition must be akin to standing in the path of an intractable threshing machine. Mistakes are forced, so that as estimable a player as George Kruis was made to look slow and clumsy. Why was Maro Itoje not on the field from the start?

And so on to Wellington, a fine and hospitable city. I have never known an atmosphere to match that in Wellington tweve years ago - an atmosphere that briefly tricked us into believing the threshing machine could be stopped. We were wrong, very wrong as it happened. Daniel Carter beat the Lions almost on his own. That, mind you, was an All Blacks team much less strong than the present incarnation.

This morning, a thriller as the dirt-trackers tossed away a healthy lead and were held to a thrilling 31-31 draws by the Hurricanes. The chatter is that Henderson, Lawes or possibly both may have forced their way into the test squad for Saturday. All I will say is that Itoje must surely start.

Finally, a word on cheating, more particularly All Black cheating. How come people have only just noticed that they cheat? I've known for years. All top sides cheat and it is only to be expected that the best team will have the most proficient cheats. What is disappointing is the licence that their sheer efficiency seems to win from referees. I rather suspect that your workaday international official is as daunted by the threshing machine as everyone else in its path.