British and Irish Lions are cheaters, says Bob Dwyer

BOB Dwyer has studied the way the British and Irish Lions play but there is only one word that will resonate: Cheats.

WORLD Cup-winning former Wallabies coach Bob Dwyer has made a deep and detailed study of the way the British and Irish Lions play but there is only one word that will resonate on the other side of the world, so let's get straight to it.

Cheats.

Dwyer is fully aware he has pulled the pin on a hand grenade by labelling the Lions in this manner and knows he is about to be savaged by the huge British and Irish media corps accompanying Warren Gatland's side, just as John Eales was before the 2003 World Cup when he accused England of illegal play in the way they used their rolling maul. But Dwyer is adamant the tourists are flouting the laws of rugby on so many fronts that for the good of the game it cannot be allowed to continue.

"We have a great game and there is massive scope for playing attractive rugby," Dwyer told The Weekend Australian yesterday. "It's not supposed to be a contest to see who can cheat the best. It's who can play the best."

And not content with stirring the ire of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, he even has found a way to fire off a barb at the old enemy across the ditch.

"One comment I'd like to make after having seen the Lions in action on tour is that it doesn't come as any surprise they're coached by a New Zealander because they play outside the laws of the game as every New Zealand side does."

That's leading with his chin given who currently coaches the Wallabies. But now, to the specifics ...

The Lions, he insists, scrummage illegally. Their hookers push upwards. This he attributes to Dylan Hartley, the Northampton and England hooker ruled out of this tour after being suspended for calling referee Wayne Barnes "a f ... ing cheat" - which is a little ironic if you accept the drift of Dwyer's argument.

According to the long-serving former Australia coach, it was Hartley who made an art form of not so much pushing forward in scrums as pushing upwards to pop his opposing hooker out of the set piece. Almost invariably referees penalise the first front-rower to stand up in a scrum, as the Lions themselves discovered in the first Test against the Springboks on the 2009 tour when South African prop Tendai 'Beast' Mtawarira repeatedly drove Phil Vickery up and almost out of the scrum. "The thinking seems to be that if you can get a penalty so easily, why not do it?" Dwyer said.

He also accuses the Lions props of binding illegally, putting their hand on the ground for extra stability and, most notably in the case of Mako Vunipola, of angling in from the loosehead side.

How Vunipola escaped punishment for this when he came off the bench against the Western Force and even more so when he started against the Queensland Reds remains one of the great mysteries of the tour.

At Suncorp Stadium last weekend, the Wellington-born England prop was scrummaging almost at right angles to the tryline no more than 5m infield from assistant referee Glen Jackson and yet no action was taken.

Then again, as the Force in particular discovered, sometimes it's best not to complain. Their experience was that Vunipola's tactics actually served to depower the Lions scrum because they forced his loosehead lock to go wide with him, thereby splitting the pack almost down the middle.

Dwyer specifically has identified the Lions' delayed shove in the scrum as illegal.

"When they put the delayed shove on, they scrummage upwards so there is nowhere for the opposing hooker to go but up."

He also accuses the Lions of knowingly employing illegal tactics for kick-off receipts.

"They form a barrier in front of the catcher," he said. "At times against the Combined Country side, there were four of them in a line ahead of the catcher. One of them made an almost childish imitation of trying to catch the ball to persuade the ref he wasn't doing anything wrong.

"You can't screen the catcher. Surely that was obvious to anyone watching the game."

Dwyer commended the Lions for the way they hit rucks, driving in low and hard, but it's what comes next in his view that is at odds with the laws of the game.

"It's good play, right up to the point where they go straight to ground to seal off the ball," he said. "The most obvious guy to detect doing this against Combined Country and the Reds was their second-rower Richie Gray, who is about 11 foot tall and has a mop of blond hair, so he's pretty hard to miss. But the officials missed him anyway, even when he joined the ruck from in front of the ball."

But according to Dwyer, the Lions' tactics at the breakdown are designed to ensure they not only win the ball but also delay the arrival of opposing players at the next ruck.

How do they do this? "They power past the ball by a metre and a half and then they hold on to defenders' jerseys."

So while there was widespread sympathy for young Lions five-eighth Owen Farrell after he was punched in the side of the head by his Saracens teammate Schalk Brits in the Barbarians match in Hong Kong, Dwyer might well have been inclined to feel the former Stormers hooker was hard done by given Farrell had grabbed a handful of his shirt to prevent him from following the play.

Dwyer's next gripe is sure to bring an ironic smile to the lips of former England and Lions coach Clive Woodward - decoy runners. Unlike Woodward, who subjected the Australian and English media corps to virtually a powerpoint display a few years back to highlight how the Wallabies were cheating by running their attack behind a screen of interference, Dwyer doesn't have a problem with the tactic, merely with the Lions' execution of it.

"When they run decoy plays, the decoy runner invariably makes contact with the defender. He doesn't smash him out of the way or anything so blatant, but it has the effect of impeding the defence."

And don't get Dwyer started on the Lions' offside play. Let's just say he has grave doubts that any of them are aware of the concept of being offside at the tackle contest.

What most disappoints Dwyer is not just that Lions' cheating appears systemic but that it's unnecessary, especially when they have ball in hand. There are three basics to playing the game of rugby in his mind and the Lions do all three of them extremely well - they run straight, they support in numbers and they realign quickly. That they choose to supplement their good play with dodgy practices deeply saddens him.

"You don't have to be smart to cheat," he said. "You just have to be a cheat."