Old pals' act was biggest error

Lions Tour: The Gilbert ball used in this Lions series is an expensive item. The company's newest, most up-to-date all-weather ball, it retails at almost £100 (€148). It is also used in the Six Nations, in the Tri-Nations and in the Super 12, but not, because of its cost, in the Celtic League, Zurich Premiership or Heineken European Cup.

This is a small point, but it tallies with Graham Henry's post-match assertion that the Super 12 - helped by the weather and, though he didn't say it, by the ball - creates the environment for the type of dynamic, multi-skilled, fast-paced game in which the All Blacks thrive. So let's hear it for the Super 12 then.

Lions' tours are great, the last of the great tours as Clive Woodward described them, and despite this being the most one-sided series in some time, this one is no different. They often provide benchmarks for the game, and this one will more than most. It has shown the game has moved on from the style of play which enabled England to conquer the world in 2003. The Super 12 and the All Blacks are the trend-setters again. We ignore this lesson at our peril.

Besides, had a reworking of the English template been successful you'd wonder what the effect on the global game would have been. Whether others, such as France, would have followed suit, and the Welsh template which helped them win the Grand Slam might have been dismissed as an aberration.

So the game is the better for it.

And might wasn't right after all. A squad of 45, rising to 51, with a back-up staff of 28, and a budget which has been estimated at anything between £6 (€8.8 million) and £10 million (14.8 million), didn't come close to delivering a series win.

There were mistakes, the most notable being Alastair Campbell, who came with too much baggage and became the biggest story of the tour. Campbell was even allowed to address the squad last Thursday with a speech which drew comparisons with the Iraq War and has been described as "embarrassing" by some of those who had to listen to it.

As an aside, their media relations have not been as good as that of the All Blacks. It needed Woodward himself to improve things, but their treatment of photographers especially gives the impression Campbell and co didn't understand they were competing with other sports back home, and putative Lions' sponsors should take note of this.

Not that Woodward did everything wrong, in a managerial sense at any rate.

Placing the players in single rooms, as was the case with England, may have been against the Lions ethos, but it wasn't why the Lions were beaten out the gate by the All Blacks. Nor was personalised I-pods or having the Lions crest stitched into each bus or plane seat.

A separate midweek coaching team had a lot of merit to it too, and Woodward had a point when saying jet lag necessitates a longer recovery period, six days, than will be the case for replacements in South Africa.

No, his biggest error was clearly believing the English module of two years ago, which actually peaked months beforehand, would be successful out here, despite being without its two best players (Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallaglio, and others being half the players they were). He love-bombed the Welsh and their players repeatedly, but clearly didn't trust them.

When it came to the crunch he ignored form, save for Shane Byrne supplanting Steve Thompson's wayward throwing in the first Test, and bringing Ryan Jones up to the bench. Otherwise the team and replacements could have been picked before the tour, before the Six Nations (in which England finished fourth after all) and even before last season.

How else does one explain Jason Robinson, Jonny Wilkinson at 12, Will Greenwood on the bench, Neil Back and Richard Hill in the backrow, Ben Kay in the secondrow? He picked a first-Test squad with an average age of 29, as against the All Blacks' 25, and one with twice as many caps, over 1,000. And with it, so far as one could tell, the set-piece orientated, territorial, mauling game.

Even without one preparatory run together, despite being cocooned behind a red blanket, you were half fearful/hopeful it might work, or at any rate be competitive. That it's become a busted flush is not the worst thing in the world.

Then, out of desperation, he and his coaching staff ripped up their formula for the second Test, and reflected form, while still harking back to some of the tried and trusted (Robinson, Wilkinson, etc, and the misguided selection of Shane Williams). But it was too late, and the All Blacks were too good.

Most probably Woodward or any other Lions coach would have lost this series. There were some brilliant backs, but it is not a vintage Lions crop, even when compared to four years ago. There is no Keith Wood, or Phil Vickery in his pomp, much less a Johnson or Dallaglio, a Hill or Back. Wilkinson, naturally, is half the player he was then. Ditto Greenwood and Robinson. And he was cruelly denied Dallaglio and Brian O'Driscoll.

Dallaglio's and Johnson's star rises with each passing day, in direct contrast to that of Woodward. He'll always be the first head coach/manager who guided a Northern Hemisphere team to the World Cup, but even his role in that is being tarnished. Woodward does regular speaking engagements, but his asking price now must have plummeted somewhat.

Likwise, Andy Robinson, Phil Larder and Dave Alred (the kicking out of hand has been generally lamentable), who have contributed to two series defeats in succession. How much Eddie O'Sullivan was a contributor to these flawed Lions, or can extricate himself from it, is an interesting one. He hasn't looked happy on this tour, but suggesting that made him even more unhappy looking. Yet if the reports this writer has been told of his row with Larder are true, they cannot enjoy the most harmonious of relationships.

The coach who one hears the best vibes about from players is Mike Ford, alas bound for Saracens and no longer part of the Irish set-up. But the coach who's stock has risen the most is Mike Ruddock. Both Henry and his assistant, Steve Hansen, were perhaps being a bit mischievous when suggesting Woodward should have looked closer to the Welsh border for a template of how modern rugby is now being played.

Then again, it's probably no coincidence Henry and Hansen were two of the Welsh coaches who laid the foundations for the type of offloading, ball-in-hand game which thrillingly won the Grand Slam, and that their work has been continued by the work of their former sidekick, Australian skills coach Scott Johnston. He didn't reinvent Wales' old running game. He helped give them a new one.

There seems to be a brave new world out there. The European club sides closest to the All Black/Welsh module are probably Wasps and Toulouse, coached by a Kiwi and a Frenchman. So you wonder if the coaches are coming through, and where O'Sullivan and a more structured Irish team - who haven't been playing this type of dynamic, offloading game - will go.

Undoubtedly heading up the Lions is one of the hardest jobs which the rugby world can throw up, amalgamating four disparate nations and their players into one cohesive force in such a short space of time. But for Jeremy Guscott's drop goal in the second Test eight years ago, this would be a fourth Lions' series defeat in a row. Even then the Lions were outscored by 10 tries to three in the series, but were indebted to the Springboks' disinclination to test Neil Jenkins', eh, mobility at fullback and safety under the high ball, while neglecting to pick a goalkicker until the third Test.

That tour did more than anything to regenerate the popularity of Lions' tours. Given 25,000-30,000 supported the Lions here, and that New Zealand embraced the concept so warmly, it's hard to believe Lions will soon die, whatever about the myopia of English/French club owners and even some union officials.

But the Lions had better win one before long. And to do that, they better be more in step with modern trends.