Rebel pair can save Lions

Not good enough to stop the World Cup-holders inside the distance, the Lions are in danger of paying dearly for letting them off the hook. In the dressing room before the game, Joe Roff read the goodwill messages from the cricketers wishing him well and wondered if it was going to be his lucky night.

By half-time, with the Wallabies counting their blessings at being only five points behind, he had begun to think it might. If he was to do his bit for the national sport of Pommie-bashing, Roff badly needed something to happen very quickly.

With 40 minutes in which to save the series, that something landed in his lap within 30 seconds of the restart. His interception of Wilkinson's dangerously lofted pass and masterful one-handed finish in the corner turned the game upside down.

A second Roff try eight minutes later, created from the rubble of a disintegrating Lions scrum, had such a deflating effect on the tourists and their 20,000 flag-waving fans that they came to grief like the proverbial lead balloon.

Before Prime Minister John Howard could rush in with his personal thanks, Wallabies scrum half George Gregan had taken a call from London on his mobile. Pat Rafter rang from Wimbledon to add his post-match enthusiasm to the personal messages faxed pre-match from Edgbaston by Steve Waugh's Ashes team.

'We were hurting a lot over the first Test and what those guys told us gave everyone a big lift,' said Roff. 'They were saying they knew we would make our own piece of history, but there is no denying that we needed a bit of luck to do it.'

One calamitous pass and one crumbling scrum scarcely explain how the series could swing so far so soon, a staggering 37-point difference between the Lions winning the first by 16 and losing the return by 21.

Given the extent of the damage, physically as well as psychologically, the real danger is that there will be no way back before 81,000 fans at Stadium Australia, especially now that John Eales has answered his personal critics in the style of a truly great captain.

For the Lions to win the series now would be as great an achievement as any. The rot which allowed Australia to come from behind and win the second half 29-3 will take some stopping by Saturday.

It all added up to the biggest rout since the All Blacks blitzed Ciaran Fitzgerald's team 38-6 in Auckland in 1983, when it was reported that 'the nearest some of these Lions should have come to this tour was the local zoo'.

Nobody would dare say that about this Test team, least of all after what they did in Brisbane, but they will forever regret squandering those first-half chances.

If only Dafydd James had taken the blinkers off in the opening minutes and used the unmarked Jason Robinson in top gear to his right. If only someone had put a finishing touch to one of three thunderous moves when the Lions unleashed their heavy artillery in the form of Martin Johnson, Scott Quinnell and Danny Grewcock.

If only . . . the two most useless words in sport.