Lions must get serious now

"You feel so bad when players have to leave the tour early, but the rest of the party has to get on with it and the arrival of Scott Gibbs, as replacement for Catty, has helped because he's such an enthusiastic guy. It has been a disappointing week and the way to bounce back is to get another win against NSW who are a powerful Super 12 side."

The current tour record shows three wins and a defeat when most pundits expected the Lions to arrive at this point of the trip unbeaten and hugely confident a week away from the First Test in Brisbane on 30 June. Now, it is up to Johnson and what looks very close to the Test XV to regain lost ground and prove to the doubters that a Test series triumph is still possible.

It was a mistake for Lions coach Graham Henry to publicly cut the mid-week team adrift from tomorrow's match 22 in the aftermath of Gosford. Henry admitted that a 10-match Lions tour was too short and, therefore, the midweek players would not get the same preparation for their two remaining games as the Saturday side.

It has created a two track tour with very few of the 15 players not involved in tomorrow's match believing they have any chance of making the Tests - unless there are more serious injuries.

Given that three Lions - Catt, Phil Greening and Luger - have been injured in training and are now off the tour, that is not such a forlorn hope. However, it would take a major disaster by the starting line-up tomorrow to force the selectors to fundamentally change their plans.

That puts even more pressure on Johnson as the central figure on the tour. Besides ensuring tomorrow's team reaches a new performance level, one that will worry world champions Australia, he has to keep the midweek players on board. It would be so easy for those players to mentally drift off and start planning their shopping trips for later in the tour.

Despite the pressure he is under, there is no doubting Johnson's ability to overcome every crisis and he will lead by example tomorrow. The England and Leicester captain is rightly feared by the locals because he embodies the kind of hard nosed forward play that can still give the Lions Test series glory.

The Lions will face many of the young players who were in the Australia A side when they take the field tomorrow and that will be an added incentive to put a very clear marker down. The Lions have opted for the muscular Darren Morris and Phil Vickery at prop and paired Danny Grewcock with Johnson in the second row. The smart money is on a 30 point winning margin for the Lions and that would brighten the entire tour party.