By PETER ROWE
‘Dominant’ was the word being used after the England Lions put WA to the sword in the first Cash Converters Challenge Test at Charles Riley Reserve on Thursday night, keeping the hosts scoreless to take out the game 22-0.
And it was a performance that had visiting Lions coach Paul Couch purring with delight.
“We corrected a few things from Saturday’s warmup game and our defence was superb tonight, especially when we went down to 11 men,” Couch said.
“Very proud and emotional about this performance because a lot of hard work has gone into this, but the job’s not done yet. We have another game on Tuesday and we want to win that.”
It wasn’t all plain sailing for the Lions though, having to weather an early onslaught from the WA side – with both teams racking up a series of errors that prevented early tries.
Completing sets was an issue as the home side struggled to put together meaningful combinations and when they did the tough English defence was there to block their path to the try line.
“We had to be patient,” Couch said. “The boys have to be so proud of how they defended.”
For 22 minutes both teams went toe to toe, back and forth before a penalty for lifting on back rower Ben Shulver 15 metres out saw halfback Danny Rowse kick the points.
The Lions then soaked up more WA pressure, losing Jacob Moore to the sin bin, before on the half-hour a big, swirling kick deep into West Australian territory from Rowse saw winger Te Toa Parkinson miss the bounce of the ball to allow his opposite number Lewis Price to gather and score.
Rowse kicked the extras but there was more sin-bin woe to come minutes later when Elliot Cousins was marched for a professional foul in front of the posts.
The Lions regrouped and showed tremendous goal line defence, aided by more WA errors to see out the half.
Player-coach Delane Edwards kept his side on field for the break and they should have gained an advantage from the kickoff when the Lions were penalised for being offside, but again they squandered the opportunity as Onisimo Tagicakibau dropped a short pass 20 metres out.
With big defensive hits exciting the crowd, the Lions survived, got one sin-binned player back on the field and slowly took control.
Five minutes into the half they scored again, pushing up the short side before switching to allow Rowse to kick to the corner where a superb kick chase saw Jake Dearden cross.
Rowse kicked a superb conversion from out wide to extend the lead as the Lions defended again deep in their own half before he added two more after poor discipline around the ruck from WA defenders.
When forward Julian Wilson-Wyllie reacted badly to a tackle and was sin-binned WA pushed again, but more errors gave up possession as the Lions held firm.
Then from a well-executed scrum play England produced a quality try as they created an extra man to allow Dom Wear to set up Rowse, who pushed the ball to fullback McShane and then to Price who dived over in the left hand corner.
Rowse added the extras to finish off the scoring for the tourists, but with 10 minutes left WA kept looking as the Lions kept defending – even on 79 minutes defending their try line as if their lives depended on it.
The impressive McShane broke through late in the game but WA recovered to prevent a further score as they went in search of something to take from the game.
Delane Edwards and Tuuta-Edwards were both held up over the try line as the Black and Golds pushed for points but the Lions held on for a famous victory.
WA will want redemption in Tuesday’s second Test at Charles Riley Reserve for a performance captain Taurean Sheehan described as “disappointing”.
“They (Lions) played exactly how we wanted to. We knew they would reset from that first game on Saturday, they corrected and we put so much pressure on ourselves. We didn’t complete sets and got lost in the moment when momentum changed,” Sheehan said.
“The Lions were really structured and we dropped more ball than them and they capitalised on that.
“We were frustrated at how well they slowed the game down and also frustrated at how they shut down our out of the back plays and that comes down to our nine and our halves, myself adjusting the game plan – and we didn’t do that.”
Now to Tuesday’ rematch and Sheehan knows they will have to a lot better.
“It starts with attitude,” he said. “If we don’t get that right then it might be another tough night.”
