LIONS RUGBY WATCH
The game was played at Homebush in front of a reported 80,312 crowd in torrential conditions and with a 40-minute mid-game delay caused by lightning.
According to rugby.com.au, the intensity of the rain an hour before the game prompted the referees to ask the ground staff to repaint the touch lines.
The Wallabies slowly took charge of the game despite the conditions.
RUN OF PLAY
Dylan Pietsch opened the scoring in the ninth minute with an unconverted try. 5-0.
The score remained that way until the 34th minute when Lion lock Mario Itoje was sent off for a Head Injury Assessment (or HIA which he failed and never returned); Tom Lynagh kicked a subsequent penalty goal. 8-0.
In the 42nd minute, the game was stopped due to lightning strikes within 15km of the stadium; after a mandatory 30-minute standdown, play resumed.
In the 57th minute, Max Jorgenson swooped on a loose pass and ran 55 metres to score when Ben Donaldson converted. 15-0.
In the 63rd minute, Lion Zac Morgan scored a converted try from a tap-and-go. 15-7.
In the 72nd minute, with Lion Ronan Kelleher in the sin-bin, Tate McDermott scored for a converted try. 22-7.
A Lions try on fulltime off a tap-and-go penalty ended the game. 22-12.
POST-MATCH
For the Lions, the loss has been compounded by the citing of hooker Dan Sheehan for a dangerous cleanout on Lynagh in the 32nd minute; Lynagh failed his HIA and had to be replaced.
After the game, Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt revealed that they had factored in the bad weather with players remaining mobile during the standdown.
“We had been warned that there might be lightning so we had a little bit of a plan,” he told rugby.com.au
“With that plan, we wanted to make sure that players kept moving, so we had different guys rotating onto the bikes.”
“We had a couple of bikes so they were doing that,” Schmidt says.
“We had four balls in the changing room that we’d just thrown around just so they could stay connected and the rest of the time it was really just trying to get us organised for the restart of the game.”
The Lions win the Test series 2-1.
