We must take some blame, says O'Connell
Paul O’Connell tonight claimed the Lions had to take collective responsibility for their miserable New Zealand tour which culminated in a Test series whitewash.
The finger of blame will inevitably point at head coach Clive Woodward following a €13m box-office flop when the All Blacks posted three emphatic Test match victories – 21-3, 48-18 and 38-19.
But O’Connell believes Woodward’s jumbo-size playing squad must take its share of flak.
Woodward took a record 45-man group to New Zealand, which rose to 50 when Simon Shaw, Simon Easterby, Ryan Jones, Brent Cockbain and Jason White joined the trip as tour replacements.
But their combined expertise, complete with a 29-strong backroom team, flew home today tagged as expensive failures.
“I think we have to take collective responsibility,” said Irish lock O’Connell, who was among a handful of players to start all three Tests.
“There were mistakes made but at the same time I think Clive needed players to produce the goods, and myself and other guys haven’t done that. It needs to go both ways.
“Maybe you can point the finger at the coaching staff but we are all experienced international players and not one of us can hold our hands up and say we’ve had very good tours. The All Blacks were very good but we were nowhere near.”
O’Connell added: “When you look back at the 1997 Lions tour to South Africa, there were a lot of stand-out guys, people like Scott Gibbs, Paul Wallace, Matt Dawson, Gregor Townsend and Lawrence Dallaglio. We had no real stand-out players.
“A lot of us just didn’t bring our A-games with us. In the last two Tests, I’ve never spilled as much ball in my life.
“‘Drisco’ (Brian O’Driscoll) went in the first Test, and we just had no real inspirational stand-out players to feed off and it killed us.”
O’Connell confirmed the popular theory that preparing a squad in just six weeks for as tough a challenge as the All Blacks presented a huge degree of difficulty.
“At this level, with the game so professional and everything so rehearsed, six weeks to put in a defensive structure, an attacking structure and a lineout structure is very tough," said the Munster forward.
“You’ve got to have everything right and then you can start to play hard rugby and play continuity rugby, but I suppose we were trying to play hard rugby and find our feet at the same time.
“I have never been on a Lions tour before, so I’ve never experienced it, but it has been a really hard one to put together.
“Things could have been done differently but hindsight is a wonderful thing. When we set out, we were totally in agreement with what we were doing. We were all perfectly happy with the way things were being run.”
