Shane Williams: Sexton and Farrell are certain to get better and better playing together

It was a privilege to be in Wellington to watch this thriller of a game; it was right up with the best sporting occasions I’ve seen and I really think the Lions can go on and win the series now.  Ahead of this tour I knew it would take something out of the ordinary to beat the All Blacks and the red card for Sonny Bill Williams certainly helped in that regard.
No, the Lions weren’t perfect – we’ll come back to that – but what a win can do for this squad is potentially priceless with the deciding game still to come.
At the end of the day, all Lions fans would have taken any sort of win before kick-off, so I don’t see any point in being too negative because that’s exactly what we got. I haven’t seen many people argue that Williams didn’t deserve to be sent off, and for me it was a definite red card.  From there, the Lions ultimately did what they needed to do and that’s all that counts.
Warren Gatland‘s side are going to be in a good place now. They’ve got momentum and going into the last match of the tour, they can still improve further. That’s a pretty handy position.
All the talk in the run-up to this game was about Warren’s decision to pair Johnny Sexton with Owen Farrell and I thought the combination worked well. I’d have liked to have seen the Lions go wider with a man advantage, but the fact they coughed up too many penalties didn’t allow them to do that. Johnny and Owen have to stay for the third Test. Owen took the plaudits because of his match-winning kick and rightly so, but I thought Johnny had a very good game. He put in a lovely flat pass in the build-up to Conor Murray’s crucial try, allowing Jamie George to hit a superb line which took him towards the New Zealand danger zone.
That’s what he can bring to a team.
Ben Te’o was unlucky to be dropped after the first Test. But the Lions have so many more options with two ball players in their side. That makes them a much more dangerous side. In the backs, the Lions have men who didn’t get much ball but are still playing at a very high level right now. Jonathan Davies is one of those. There will be some people who watch him play and say he doesn’t do anything too remarkable. But if you look closely, he does all the basics of the game very, very well. He’s a world-class centre at the top of his game. With 32 metres made and seven carries, his statistics back that up.
I was also pleased to see the Lions forwards step up in the contact area. They were ferocious and that went a long way to helping them come out on top. Now, the challenge is for the whole squad to replicate that next week. I wouldn’t make any changes on the back of this famous win, but there are a couple of areas I’d like to see the Lions improve. Their kicking game is one of them as is the obvious problem of discipline because there were too many silly penalties.
In Sexton and Farrell they have two guys who are very good at putting their team in the right positions on the field, but they didn’t put boot to ball at the right times for me or as often as I’d have liked given the wet conditions.
When I look at this Lions back division, I think they will benefit even further from a second game with both Sexton and Farrell on the field. You have to remember, this was the first match they have started together. Any new combination is going to take a while to bed in.
So it’s on to next week and it couldn’t be set up any better. The Lions have the chance to come out on top going into the final game. How exciting is that?
I think we can win the series now, but we’re still underdogs and have to play up to that position. That’s the approach I’d adopt if I was Warren this week.  We need to keep talking the All Blacks up, relish the position as the outsider and see what happens. That sort of approach from Warren will bring the best out of his players in a huge week.
The next seven days will be the biggest of these players’ lives. How do they handle it? Well, it’s different strokes for different folks, but I think a few days in Queenstown will really help the squad to get away from the pressures of the third Test. Escaping the mania that will be in Auckland will be important, because hysteria is going to set in.
I think the Lions have the sort of experienced players who can deal with the pressure. That’s why I was so impressed and a little but surprised by the reaction of a lot of the guys at full time.
Test match rugby is a brutal game, it’s incredibly draining and can make your emotions go all over the place so I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a lot of celebrations at the final whistle, particularly from some of the Welsh guys who have never beaten New Zealand before. That it didn’t happen shows me that this Lions squad is in a good place. If you looked at guys like Sam Warburton, right, Alun Wyn Jones and Taulupe Faletau, they didn’t look too worked up. They know they have a big game coming up, probably the biggest of their lives, and the preparation starts now.
Modern-day rugby is a relentless beast and the guys will know recovery and preparation is vital. That starts almost as soon as the previous game ends.
This Lions series has been the biggest yet in terms of media attention, and that will go up another notch this week. I’m not sure if we’ll have ever seen anything like it, but in Sam the Lions have a leader who will keep his squad on the ground.
The Lions know they’ve achieved nothing yet. All they’ve done is given themselves a shot at immortality. The door is half open, now they must walk through it.
Of course it won’t be easy. The All Blacks will be wounded and are sure to respond. You only have to look at their defeat to Ireland in Chicago and how that was followed by a brutally efficient win in Dublin the following week.
That should be a lesson to the Lions, but on the whole I’m in a hugely positive mood. The Lions are on the verge of history. What a story it would be if they were to come out on top in the toughest rugby country on the planet.