Woodward stands by numbers

Lions Tour: The Lions effectively cancelled Wednesday yesterday. A spate of injuries compelled Clive Woodward and his management team to postpone training, delay selection and cancel all media engagements for 24 hours.

In the immortal words of Martin Johnson prior to the third Test four years ago, the Lions are being held together with sticking tape.

Given he came here with an enlarged squad and adopted a softly, softly approach with regard to exposing players to training and game time, Woodward cited the injury toll as a justification for picking an initial squad of 45 and supplementing them with replacements.

"You can't keep backing up midweek-Saturday, midweek-Saturday," he said. "For people to tell me we should have come here with 33, 34 players, we're going to argue all night, because you just can't do that.

"We've actually already replaced 13 players through injury but that doesn't take into any account the number of players we couldn't pick through the state of their bodies. If anything we've got too few numbers if we're going to be really, really competitive in all these games."

The criticism of Woodward's modus operandi is not so much about the numbers per se as about the employment of them. In this Woodward concurred, but effectively maintained he had his hands tied.

"I clearly agree with you. But you have to take that into account when you're planning.

"I planned this very, very carefully. I see what's being written and I just shake my head, because I know what's happening in the changing room and I also speak to the players.

"I know behind the scenes this is one of the happiest Lions trips there's been in terms of players, coaches and management staff getting on. It's been a very successful tour - just take away the two Test matches - especially as that was the number one priority when we came here."

Of course, in all of this Woodward has been hoist on his own petard. After all, he repeatedly vowed that this would be the best-prepared Lions team ever, supplementing it with assurances that he had a warm feeling and that anyone inclined to should hop on a plane out here to witness "something special".

But to that end, he rarely gave Test combinations a chance to gel in match situations and seems to miss the point that, more than anything else, his players simply wanted to play Test matches.

Unrepentant as ever, Woodward stated: "If I had my time again I would ask the Lions to put in cotton wool the top 22 players and play no games, and just get them ready for that first Test match. But I think they would turn that down and rightly so, because that would be the end of Lions tours as we know it."

But would they have been tried and tested sufficiently for a Test match against the All Blacks?

Those ruled out of next Saturday's third Test included Jonny Wilkinson, Charlie Hodgson, Gavin Henson and Ollie Smith, which would seem to mean a call-up to the 22 for Ronan O'Gara and perhaps even a belated second start of the tour for Shane Horgan, who has worn the number 22 shirt so often that one day his children will ask: "Dad, were there 22 players in a team when you played?"

And Woodward was backed in his much-debated number of players by Dr James Robson, who is in his fourth tour as a Lions doctor and expressed himself abundantly grateful for the support of Dr Gary O'Driscoll.

"Usually by this time I'm on my knees and facing going home needing about a month of rehabilitation and several glasses of wine," he said.

"I'm actually very relaxed because we have not had the pressure to deliver people back to games where they're clearly not fit enough."

However, if Woodward has no regrets about this aspect of the tour there was no sign of let-up from the All Blacks, who are in comparatively rude health.

James Ryan moves on to the bench in place of Jono Gibbes but otherwise the All Blacks have made only two injury enforced changes - Leon MacDonald taking over from the injured wunderkind Daniel Carter at outhalf and Conrad Smith coming into the midfield equation for Aaron Mauger as Tana Umaga moves to inside centre.

Which suggests they are sniffing blood again.

"We're taking this Test very seriously and we're putting our best team on the field and if Daniel had been fit he would obviously have been in the side," explained Henry, whimsically noting that Carter had "done enough" to retain his place.

"We're very pleased with the progress we've made but we feel we can still move further up the graph and we want to do that. So we had a policy in selection which was to pick our best team for this Test match."

In imperiously laconic form throughout a contrastingly more entertaining press conference, Henry targeted a better start, spoke of Justin Marshall finishing the encounter from the bench in his final All Black appearance and, once again, declined to put the boot into Woodward when asked if he had any sympathy for the man who had loudly proclaimed that his predecessor had presided over a fairly miserable Lions tour.

"I can relate to what he's going through. You do have an affinity for that. I probably know better than anyone else what Clive is going through and I understand that and I do sympathise with him on that. How's that?"

In the circumstances, fairly magnanimous.

Lions prop Graham Rowntree has escaped a ban for punching in Tuesday's victory over Auckland.

Rowntree pleaded guilty to striking Bryce Williams in the first minute of the game, but the IRB judiciary let him off with a warning after his lawyer successfully argued the action was a clumsy attempt to remove Williams from the breakdown.

The Auckland centre Sam Tuitupou has, however, been banned for six weeks after pleading guilty to stamping on Gordon D'Arcy in the 52nd minute of the same match.