Johnson: The Lions week from hell

The 1971 Lions are the stuff of legend because nobody remembers, or cares, that they lost to Queensland at the outset of that tour.

A winning tour is a happy one, a losing one is not. I know because I have experienced both - the loss in New Zealand in 1993, then victory in South Africa four years later.

Tomorrow marks the halfway stage and there will be 37 Lions more determined than ever to make a collective point, the 22 on match duty plus everyone else. It's a question of making sure we bounce back in a big way. Don't get me wrong. The midweek performance was not acceptable. They say you learn lessons from defeat, but the basic lesson is so blindingly obvious you don't need to be beaten to appreciate it. If you play poorly, you are going to lose.

If there had been another five minutes, we might have nicked it. That would then have been interpreted as a sign of a good team, not playing well but still coming through to win.

But there can be no denying that we got what we deserved. It was a poor performance and we could easily have conceded more than the one try. We didn't win enough set-piece ball, we didn't put them under pressure and our penalty count was so high it killed us.

There was no need for a massive inquiry the next morning because everyone knew what had gone wrong and what had to be done to put it right. Rugby is about far more than having a physical presence. At this level it's vital to have the right mental attitude. Players must take individual responsibility to ensure they are in the right frame of mind.

Perhaps after the one-sided nature of the first three matches, we dropped our guard.

Certain individuals played very well, most notably Will Greenwood and Austin Healey, but as a team we simply didn't function. Watching from the stand with the rest of the squad was a frustrating experience and the dressing room at the end had a horrible, empty feeling.

The long journey home to Sydney did nothing to raise the spirits. I made it my business to have a quiet word with the players involved in the match, reminding them why we have come here and how we need every-one's help to achieve our mission.

There will be nothing wrong with the attitude tomorrow, nor, I hope, with the performance. Although I've been reunited with my missing phone, we've done enough losing for one week.