The British and Irish Lions have landed on our shores, and all of a sudden, rugby’s most historic series is mere hours from getting underway.
The Lions fell short against a determined, brave, and aggressive Argentina in Dublin last weekend, and the men from Perth must display the same qualities if they are to tame the best of the UK and Ireland on Saturday night.
While the Force, being a provincial club side, look at long odds of causing an upset, they have attributes as a team that the Lions do not.
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The Lions have elite athletes, with more Test caps than some of the Force players have played games at their club.
This is what makes this tour so special for the provincial players, but what the Force have that the Lions don’t is a team connection, forged over almost a year together.
The Force’s collective understanding of systems, patterns, calls, and defensive shape gives them an upper hand on the recently cobbled-together Lions.
Superior athletes may appear to trump cohesion and connection, but as we saw against Argentina, the Lions split at the seams when put under pressure and likewise tried to solve developing problems as individuals or national units.
This disorder will only last so long, and you can bet by the time the first Test against the Wallabies arrives, on July 19, the Lions will have plenty of cohesion, with deadly connections made across the park.
Nevertheless, on June 28, the Western Force will be a better unit than the visitors, and it means they know their strengths and weaknesses, and this knowledge should provide them with a map to success.
Firstly, the Force must be upfront about their defence; they struggled to maintain a watertight defence this season, and this saw them tackle at just 86.3 per cent, ninth worst in the competition.
However, because they run a rush defence, it’s not the quantity of missed tackles but rather where the missed tackles occurred which will have a bearing on the tactics of Saturday night.
This being said, the Force can’t afford to go into their shell defensively; they must be aggressive in their defensive line speed and brutal in their contacts.
They must trust the work they have done during the season, because although their defence is not perfect, the pressure they will put on the Lions’ ability to remember and implement their systems is a worthy payoff.
Where the Lions are searching for connection, the Force must be brutally determined in their honed shape and patterns, otherwise they forgo one of their key advantages.
If they do this successfully, the Lions’ passes will miss their mark, cleaners will be out of position, rucks will be slower, and decision makers will have less time to relieve pressure.
In defence, this must be led by first-time Wallaby squad member Nick Champion de Crespigny, as well as Darcy Swain and Hamish Stewart.
Secondly, the Force had the best defensive lineout in Super Rugby 2025.
Swain and regular captain Jeremy Williams, who will miss this game as he prepares for the Wallabies’ game against Fiji on July 6, were the wheelhouse of the set-piece domination.
Even without Williams, Swain is an astute lineout caller, maul operator, and lineout pest, alongside the likes of Sam Carter and Will Harris, Swain will be able to disrupt the Lions’ ball.
His matchup with first-time Lions second rowers Scott Cummings and Joe McCarthy is a key battle, and one to keep your eyes on.
The lineout is crucial because it gives the Force a set piece they can possibly dominate, it will give them a secure launchpad in attack and an opportunity to disrupt the Lions’ flow in defence.
The lineout is crucial because the other set piece, the scrum, has been on skates all year, and with the likes of Pierre Schoeman and Tadhg Furlong in the Lions’ starting XV, and Will Stuart off the bench, it looks to be another tough night at the office for the Force’s props.
Fixture
British & Irish Lions
Force
British & Irish Lions
The scrum is a huge weakness for the Force, and the Lions know this, and this is why this next key area may just be the most crucial to the Force’s hopes of a major upset.
Kicking will decide this game, and if you need a reminder of how important a good kicking game is, just look at Will Jordan’s performance in the SRP final or at how Argentina dismantled the Lions’ backfield at the Aviva last weekend.
The Force must kick intelligently and purposefully if they hope to rock the Lions, but this is where the conundrum comes for them.
They have a leaky defence, and a well-regimented lineout as mentioned above, but what really unstuck the Lions against Argentina was a contestable kicking game as well as territory searching probes into the backfield.
The catch-22 here is that the Force leak so many line breaks from counterattacks, and their lineout is so good, so their focus should be on kicking long and out wherever they are on the pitch.
Wallabies flyhalf Ben Donaldson will be a key player in the kicking battle and now has an opportunity to impress Wallabies’ coach Joe Schmidt ahead of the Fiji Test.
Donaldson answered an SOS from the Force after veteran Wallaby Kurtley Beale suffered an ankle injury late in the week, he will slot into fullback while regular starter Mac Grealy joins Wallaby Dylan Pietsch in the wings.
However, despite the strength of their defensive lineout, they won’t want to hand the Lions too much possession, because even though they looked flustered at times in Dublin, their elite athletes and game managers still managed to get them into Argentina’s 22m-zone more than a dozen times.
The Lions will punish the Force if they get these sorts of numbers at Optus Stadium on Saturday night.
The Force must trust their rush defence and continue their line speed to stress the skills and newly learned systems of the Lions.
They must dominate the lineout on either side of the ball and work to give themselves opportunities to frustrate the Lions pack’s relationships at the set-piece, whilst mitigating penalties suffered at scrum time.
This means they must kick often, long and ideally out to give themselves these contests.
The Force should work to retain possession for as long as possible in attack around the Lions’ 22m-zone and must mitigate those phases when in their own half.
Even if the Western Force play this game to perfection tactically, the Lions have the better athletes who are far more experienced.
However, pressure does funny things to people, and there is no doubt the pressure is well and truly on the visitors, whereas for many of the Force lads, they are getting a once-in-a-career opportunity to play the Lions, an opportunity they are guaranteed not to waste.
So while the odds are against them, they are at home, in front of the sea of blue, and have nothing to lose, a dangerous combination for the Lions who are fresh off a loss and a plane trip halfway around the world.
