What peeved Andy Farrell the most after lame Lions win

Frustrated Lions boss Andy Farrell admits that his side need to cut out the errors after they turned the ball over 20 times in their 21-10 victory over the NSW Waratahs.

Farrell was unhappy that the Lions toiled to an unimpressive win over the Waratahs with two tries from Huw Jones and another from man of the match Alex Mitchell, despite dominating territory and possession.

He said that the Lions didn’t underestimate the Waratahs but instead wants to see his side play more directly, which is when they have looked dangerous in the three games they have played Down Under.

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“There is a bit of frustration. It’s nice to get a win, but at this stage, we are trying to judge the performance a little bit more.

“I was disappointed with the amount of possession and territory that we had and how we dealt with certain situations. Let’s congratulate the Waratahs for the game that they played.

“But when you have 70 per cent of the territory and 60 per cent of the possession and 20 turnovers, that’s by far not clinical enough.

“We have got to turn our hands up and say that amount of turnover ball is credit to them, obviously, but not good enough from us.

“Are we glad that has happened to us? Yes, because there are some lessons we need to learn quickly in regard to that type of game,” he said.

Farrell said he was very happy with Mitchell, who has had to carry a heavy workload following an injury to Tomos Williams, but said that Ben White will now help him out.

Possession

20%

44%

10%

26%

4%

15%

49%

32%

24%

Possession Last 10 min

76%

39%

Possession

61%

“I thought he played really well, and I thought we should have reacted better off Mitch. When he got his running game going, we should have reacted and certainly played a lot tighter off him.

“Certainly, when we played the tighter and more direct game, we were more on point. We are good when we are direct. We made line breaks the whole time when we went direct.

“It didn’t matter if we were playing off nine or off ten. It’s not just pigeonholing yourself. It’s what is in front of your face that you have to adapt to.

“When the ball is slow because of the pressure of the breakdown, you can’t keep shovelling the ball out wide and keep expecting to get onto the front foot.

“These games are not friendlies. They are for us to prepare for test matches. The 50-pointers aren’t reality, really, are they?”