Springboks win the series

[Bogger]

THought it was a great test, Lions were super first half, the Boks the second-they upped the phyicality and just scrapped it when Lions injuries mounted. Burger should have had a red, what difference would that have made we'll never know. Felt Shaw gave away few soft penalities when he got tired, no way man of mathc, but played better than I thought he would.

Poor ROG, he gave away a soft penalty but that was not the reason for losing the test, his head was split open when he came on and I think the pace of the game just casught him - he's still a clss player.

[thecoolfreak]

THought it was a great test, Lions were super first half, the Boks the second-they upped the phyicality and just scrapped it when Lions injuries mounted. Burger should have had a red, what difference would that have made we'll never know. Felt Shaw gave away few soft penalities when he got tired, no way man of mathc, but played better than I thought he would.

Poor ROG, he gave away a soft penalty but that was not the reason for losing the test, his head was split open when he came on and I think the pace of the game just casught him - he's still a clss player.

Good post. As you say, it wasn't ROG who cost us the game. Wallace, Fitzgerald, BOD and Roberts all made mistakes in the build up to their tries. Whoever gave away the penalty on the stroke of half time, which turned out to be a turning point in the match, is every bit as responsible as O'Gara. At the end of the day the Lions came up short, and boy was it desperately disappointing

[ceemec]

THought it was a great test, Lions were super first half, the Boks the second-they upped the phyicality and just scrapped it when Lions injuries mounted. Burger should have had a red, what difference would that have made we'll never know. Felt Shaw gave away few soft penalities when he got tired, no way man of mathc, but played better than I thought he would.

Poor ROG, he gave away a soft penalty but that was not the reason for losing the test, his head was split open when he came on and I think the pace of the game just casught him - he's still a clss player.

Good post. As you say, it wasn't ROG who cost us the game. Wallace, Fitzgerald, BOD and Roberts all made mistakes in the build up to their tries. Whoever gave away the penalty on the stroke of half time, which turned out to be a turning point in the match, is every bit as responsible as O'Gara. At the end of the day the Lions came up short, and boy was it desperately disappointing

Jamie Roberts. Blocked a tackler just before half time.

[hugonaut]

Whoever gave away the penalty on the stroke of half time, which turned out to be a turning point in the match, is every bit as responsible as O'Gara.

Don't agree with that at all. There's a hierarchy of importance in incidences in a rugby match, which can be irrespective of points, in my opinion. For example, an outhalf missing a kick to touch from a penalty can be the most important incident in deciding the game, even if there are no points conceded directly.

Roberts dummy-run/block – the pass had been given and received behind his back before he made any contact with the Springbok tackler [Adi Jacobs, I believe] – has gone unpunished in other games. Furthermore, there was ample time for the Lions to come back from the concession of three points – a whole half. They managed to hold off about 18 minutes of intense Springbok pressure directly after half time without conceding a score, and then Jones put them 19-8 ahead. I don't think that Roberts' penalty was necessarily a turning point in the match, unless you consider all the points that the winners rack up as turning points.

There was no time for the Lions to come back from O'Gara's penalty offence. They were level at the time, and Steyn's kick was literally the last kick of the game. It was ROG's offence which cost the Lions the game, and thusly it was ROG who cost his team the game. That may be brutal, but it's accurate.

The game had not yet unfolded when Roberts gave away his penalty; it had almost completely unfolded by the time ROG gave away his.

If you don't believe in varying importance of points in different situations and timing in a match, if you don't think that momentum has a part to play or that scoring sequence is important, fair enough. If Heaslip or Fitzgerald had done the same thing as O'Gara did, I'd be equally as blunt. If it was Drico or Kearney, they'd have their otherwise exceptional performances as a mitigating factor in keeping the Lions in the game, and I'd defend them using that as a basis, but the facts would still show that they gave away a kickable penalty in the penultimate action of the game that ended up costing the Lions the game.

O'Gara came on, got cracked in the head making a poor attempt at a tackle, got run over by Fourie on his way to scoring a try and conceded the penalty that cost the Lions the game. An absolute f*cking nightmare for him.

The Lions losing isn't the same as Ireland losing: I don't hold a grudge against O'Gara, as I might do if he'd done a similar thing in a vital Irish game. The Lions tours are great because you get all the benefits of supporting them without the devastation that goes with a loss. It's just disappointing, not devastating. However, O'Gara did wind up costing the Lions the match. My thinking isn't going to change much on that given my reasoning above.