- guardian.co.uk, Sunday July 8 2001 14.21 BST
In the third minute of the first half of the first Test, the Lions sent the ball to Jason Robinson and the little winger scored a try that set in motion a most amazing half of rugby.
In the third minute of the second half of the second Test Jonny Wilkinson tried to pass the ball to the wing on the other side of the field and set in motion another most amazing half of rugby.
You win one, you lose one. Quite how snugly either of the passes fitted into the game-plan for the series is open to doubt. What is seriously not in question is the damage inflicted on the Lions' scrummage soon after the interception try by Joe Roff.
An interception try is one thing; a half-wheel and drive that ends with John Eales, of all people, initiating from the second row a move that sees Roff go over for a killer second is quite another.
Damage inflicted at the scrum spreads. Soon the Lions' line-out was not working. Soon the defence was not stepping up with ferocious appetite and ramrod straight alignment. George Gregan had half a yard to run his lateral lines and tease, tease the Lions.
And how different Toutai Kefu, George Smith and, above all, Owen Finegan looked when wee George was waving his tickling stick. And Stephen Larkham outside his scrum-half looked altogether more assured, for that matter.
Can the initiative be dragged back? Can the hard-core mind-set of the captain prevail? Is there one last massive performance left in his players? The captain talked afterwards of the long, hard season that it has been already.
Was there a note of resignation there? Has even Martin Johnson begun to have doubts? He will pull himself together one last time and drag the others with him.
Or has the whole rust-bucket of a train behind the captain finally been derailed? This has not been a happy caravan. Matt Dawson may have made an error of judgment by expressing mutinous feelings on the very day of the first Test, but the management could not afford to exile their diarist because they knew that he represented the views of many.
This has been a tour of contrasts. Mutiny and marvels one morning. Contentment and collapse the next.
Without the forwards this series cannot be won. As soon as they went walkabout, the game was lost. Rod Moore and Michael Foley bolstered the Wallaby scrum; John Eales and David Giffin did the line-out number on Martin Johnson in particular. Johnson was the totem. Mess up his ball and you mess up the entire team.
But without Jason Robinson the series cannot be won either. The notion that the Lions can rumble into kicking range and Jonny Wilkinson will do the rest has no value any more. The game's pace is too high for a rumble to impose itself. Nothing is going to slow down now. In fact, things are only going to hot up even more.
This suits Robinson. Speed means space. But to find Robinson, Wilkinson has to be prepared to gamble.
The midfield was so effective in the first Test that it became the object of a huge concentra tion of defensive effort by the Wallabies. Brian O'Driscoll still managed to shine on occasions - without being able to provide the polish of Brisbane - but Rob Henderson was shut out of the game.
There is no reason to suppose that Daniel Herbert and Nathan Grey will open up a chink of charity for them now. Wilkinson may have to play it with long passes if he is to find the match-winner. And long spells danger. Roff may get there first again.
Robinson is a match-winner. Martin Johnson is a winner. They need to connect. The heavyweight second row with the tiny winger. The tour will be starkly contrasting to the bitter end.
Who can pull it all together in time? The iron-willed forwards whose pride has just been smashed? The mutineers and diarists who hate this tour? Henry, the cold fish?
Somebody is going to have to grab this mobile psychiatric ward and make some sense of it. It has been a fascinating tour in many respects because it has been so downright peculiar. But peculiar only works if peculiar wins a Test series.
This is only rugby but a lot of careers are going down the pan unless Johnson or Robinson or Wilkinson or Freud can find an answer in the next few days.
