WHEN Steve Hansen was asked about claims Mako Vunipola grabbed Owen Franks’ by the testicles during the First Test, the All Blacks coach got to the crux of this sport.
“Look,” growled Hansen, “rugby is a big boys’ game played by big boys with big character.”
After a week of bitching and bleating and ‘dragging stuff up’, he was drawing the battlelines for tomorrow’s Second Test.
And despite all the sublime skills possessed by New Zealand’s world champions and these British & Irish Lions, all the talk was of physicality.
Sam Warburton, the Lions’ returning captain, was happy to pick up this gauntlet.
The Cardiff flanker admitted what boss Warren Gatland has already stated starkly: that the Lions were physically dominated in their First Test defeat and that they must heal wounded pride here in Wellington to keep the series alive.
After all, if Warburton hadn’t been up for the fight, he would have ended up as a soft-lad football type — like his old Whitchurch School team-mate Gareth Bale.
But Warburton, 28, said: “We’re rugby players because we enjoy the physicality.
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“I used to play football but I got too many yellow cards. That’s why I play rugby because I love the physical side — so when you come off second best it does hurt.
“Sometimes you lose games because of a bounce of the ball or a referee’s decision and those losses are difficult to take.
“But when you have been physically outplayed — and we were last Saturday — that does hurt you and we want to put that right.
“We all realise that last Saturday was probably the first game on tour where we were beaten at the breakdown from a physicality point of view.
“Accepting that is going to fuel the fire for this Saturday.
“There are lots of games which are ‘must-win’, but this is actually MUST-WIN. The motivational levels are extremely high, so it’s trying to keep the lads composed and making sure we execute the gameplan because motivation won’t be a problem.”
While there was much talk about the ‘quiet authority’ of last week’s captain Peter O’Mahony, the Irishman has been jettisoned from tomorrow’s match-day 23.
Tour captain Warburton, his replacement at No 6, is the real deal as a leader of men — articulate, passionate and, at his best, indomitable.
New Zealand are the only national team Warburton is yet to experience victory against.
He thought his Wales side were in control against the All Blacks in 2014 but suggests that two or three Welsh heads dropped, allowing Hansen’s men to prevail.
Warburton — a Welshman, of English parentage, with some Scottish blood — claims such a loss of belief will never happen with these scarlet-shirted tourists.
He said: “I always pride myself that I’ll never quit. Ever. But in a team of 15 players, you only need two or three guys to drop their head and that could be the game gone.
“You need 15 guys who stay on it for 80 minutes and those guys who come off the bench, exactly the same.
“You get that in a Lions team because everyone is so competitive.
“You might have a couple of guys at international level who drop their heads but you definitely don’t get that with the Lions.”
Since last week’s 30-15 defeat in Auckland, Gatland accused the All Blacks of dirty tricks in targeting of scrum-half Conor Murray; Hansen replied that he was "desperate" and the local press photo-shopped the Lions boss as a clown.
Then came the unsubstantiated claim about big Mako using what the locals call a ‘squirrel grip’ – grabbing hold of the nuts.
Yet, apart from a quick half-hour in a Wellington pub with a group of touring schoolmates on Wednesday, Warburton has been enclosed in his Lions ‘bubble’ and oblivious to the hype.
Warburton, now fully recovered from the knee injury that left him undercooked for the First Test, said: “We don’t have a clue what’s outside our team room.
“I went out for the first time in four weeks because ten of my mates are here, they spent all that money to come halfway across the world to watch me play rugby. They were in a bar so I popped in to say hello for half-an-hour and it was absolutely crazy.
“It was the first experience I’d had of what the fans are like. It was great fun but few of our players have seen that.
“I realised that with the last Lions tour in Australia. It wasn’t until I went home and reflected that I thought ‘wow is that actually what happened?’
“This is a bit more special, it’s not just another game but you try to treat it like that.
“I’ve just completely shut myself off from the outside world for a couple of months so I can focus.”
Warburton has even ditched his usual mobile phone, replacing it with a local handset and including just numbers of team-mates, close friends and family.
He said: “I’m a bit anal in my preparations.
“Before the tour, you get asked hundreds of times for signed jerseys and things.
“When I was younger, I was running around trying to get things signed and doing all these favours.
“This time I thought, ‘right, this is going to be two or three of the most important months of my career’.
“I had to do whatever it takes to be as prepared as possible.”
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