Wallabies versus Lions finale in Sydney will provide Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus with priceless information

COMMENT

The big question ahead of Saturday’s final Test match between the British and Irish Lions and Australia in Sydney is: who wants it more?

Few will be more glued to their screens than Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus, as the teams contest a dead rubber match. The Lions are 2-0 up in the series and have said they would love to make it three-zip — but do they want it that much? And will the Aussies be able to replicate their magnificent showing last week, when they came within 30 seconds of levelling the series?

The Wallabies delivered their best performance in more than four years to almost upset a Lions side that had been in a different class in the first Test. Nobody saw an Australian revival coming, but it came to pass — and it is a pity, from a neutral point of view, that the Australians could not close the game out to guarantee a decider on Saturday.

What was clear from last week’s cliffhanger at the Melbourne Cricket Ground — that wonderful cathedral of Aussie sport — is that the Wallabies did not have the legs to close out the game. They were 23-5 up at one point, but you could see the energy draining from their bodies as the superior Lions bench outmuscled their gold-shirted counterparts.

That is what Erasmus will have noted as the two-match Rugby Championship series against the Wallabies looms into view. The Boks host the Australians on 16 August in Johannesburg and a week later in Cape Town, and Erasmus will be planning an all-out Bomb Squad assault on the second half of those matches.

On the evidence of the two matches thus far in the Lions series, the Wallabies have improved enough to be strong contenders in games — but do not yet have the firepower to finish them off.

The Boks, of course, have made finishing games an art, and in anticipation, the Bomb Squad will be oiling their explosive devices.

Or will an Australian team, rapidly gelling under wily coach Joe Schmidt, show on Saturday that they have found a new gear to compete with the best until the last minute?

I doubt it.

Saturday’s game is intriguing because nobody knows who wants a dead rubber game the most.

If you look at history, in 2009 the Boks and the Lions fought out one of the most ferocious games in history in the second Test at Loftus Versfeld, with a Morné Steyn penalty deciding the most tense of affairs to give the Boks an unassailable 2-0 lead. A week later, the (hungover) Boks were smashed at Ellis Park by the Lions.

The same happened in 1997, when the boot was on the other foot. The Lions won the first two Tests, and the Boks responded with a 19-point victory in the dead rubber third Test in Johannesburg.

To take it beyond the Lions series: in 1996, the All Blacks won the first two matches of a series against the Boks, but the South Africans rallied for the (dead rubber) third Test and won comfortably by 10 points.

Again, we ask the question: do the Lions have enough in the tank to put away the desperate Wallabies and earn a historic 3-0 series win? No Lions team in the professional era has whitewashed their opponents. The last time it happened was in 1974, when the Lions won 3-0 in South Africa.

Or will the Aussies rally and show Erasmus they are an 80-minute team?

All will be revealed in Sydney on Saturday. And come what may, Erasmus will have soaked up priceless intelligence on the Wallabies.