Rugby Union: Little consolation in dour victory: Confidence leaves the Lions in their final game before Saturday's first Test

Southland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

British Isles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34

AWFUL, awful. The Lions' final warm-up for Saturday's first Test was an awful game in which their awful run of injuries continued unabated. The only consolation is that none of yesterday's three casualties is actually out of the tour.

The palpable mood-change from the morale-crushing defeat by Otago has left the Lions short of confidence when five days ago they were bursting with it. It showed at Rugby Park, where they encountered the weakest opposition of the tour but dismally failed to exploit an obvious superiority.

Indeed, but for its geographical location at New Zealand's bottom end, Southland - fifth of nine of last season's NZ Second Division - would probably not even have been on the Lions' schedule. After yesterday, they might just wish they had not been. Even Geoff Cooke, the Lions manager, conceded that the game was a bore.

That it was also a win was more or less the only positive feature. The Lions' performance continued their miserable weekend into midweek, with nothing in it to suggest they can stretch the All Blacks in Christchurch. So much for the optimism with which we greeted the first four matches.

The Otago game having put Scott Hastings out of the tour and put in doubt Will Carling's fitness for the Test, the Southland game left a third centre, Scott Gibbs, with bruised ankle ligaments that will take at least a week to heal.

On top of that Rob Andrew went off after being hit on the nose and the replacement stand- off, Stuart Barnes, needed 12 stitches in a head wound. Neither is serious. Southland were in the wars, too, with two sets of cracked ribs and a broken thumb. With the referee whistling an incessant tune - mostly against the Lions - small wonder that continuity, the buzz- word of New Zealand rugby, was notable by its absence.

In the first half there occurred occasional outbursts of malice that lingered longer in the memory than any of the play. The Lions unveiled their version of vigorous, New Zealand-style rucking but performed it poorly and when Mark Tinnock showed how it should be done, with his boots pumping like pistons on Richard Webster, he was quite properly penalised. Back in the old country he would have been sent off.

Somewhere in the middle of all this the Lions pack trundled to two tries, one a penalty try when Bobby Murrell dived unsubtly into a prospective pushover and the other by the deserving Andy Reed, swept across by a drive off the back of a scrum. When the Lions had accumulated 24 unspectacular points by half-time, there was a reasonable expectation that they would then greatly expand both their game and their tally.

The expectation was unfounded. It started promisingly when Tony Underwood, fed up with doing nothing on the wing, came infield and, with Gibbs, sliced powerfully through the middle. The first line breached, Anthony Clement did wonders to dodge past the remainder of the defence.

Thereafter the Lions had little to offer. In the second half they were penalised as severely by Mike Fitzgibbon as they had been all through against North Harbour, on top of which the inability of Peter Wright to hold the scrum steady on the tight- head side meant a potential area of advantage was nullified.

Ultimately, Southland were the better team, scoring excellent tries by both wings, Jimmy Cormack and Phil Johnston. Far from enjoying some restorative therapy, the Lions looked as if they were still in a state of shock after what had befallen them in Dunedin.

Or perhaps their thoughts were elsewhere. 'They were probably more interested in getting on a plane and getting out of Invercargill and focusing on the Test. To me they didn't look interested in the second half,' Keith Robertson, the Southland coach, suggested accusingly. The Test team will be announced on arrival in Christchurch.

Southland: Tries Cormack, Johnston; Penalties Culhane 2. British Isles: Tries Reed, Clement, penalty try; Conversions Hastings 2; Penalties Hastings 4; Drop goal Clement.

SOUTHLAND: S Forrest; P Johnston (Invercargill), A James (Old Boys), G Beardsley (Invercargill), J Cormack (Albion); S Culhane (Invercargill), R Murrell (Old Boys); R Palmer (Waikaka), D Heaps (Invercargill), C Corbett (Star), M Tinnock (Old Boys), W Miller (Waikaka), B Morton (Albion), R Smith (Tokanui), P Henderson (Marist, capt). Replacements: D Henderson (Invercargill) for P Henderson, h/t; S Hayes (Tokanui) for Heaps, 71; R Bekhuis (Star) for Tinnock, 73.

BRITISH ISLES: G Hastings (Scotland, capt); R Wallace (Ireland), A Clement, S Gibbs (Wales), T Underwood; R Andrew (England), R Jones (Wales); J Leonard, B Moore (England), P Wright, D Cronin, A Reed (Scotland), M Teague (England), M Galwey (Ireland), R Webster (Wales). Replacements: S Barnes (England) for Andrew, 66; J Guscott (England) for Gibbs, 77; D Morris (England) for Barnes, 80.

Referee: M Fitzgibbon (Christchurch).