Six of the best can give Boks a beating

Tourists kick off from a position of strength but their hopes of eclipsing the world champions hinge on a mobile game plan and three key pairings continuing to gel

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South Africa is not the place for a strategy of hit and hope, so when Warren Gatland, one of the British and Irish Lions' senior coaches, expressed the view yesterday that the Springboks were an "unknown quantity" in terms of their readiness for the first Test at King's Park this afternoon, it seemed a worryingly flimsy basis on which to predict a victory for the tourists.

Happily, Gatland had more – much more – to say on his team's approach to this contest, which will either put the Lions within 80 minutes of a triumph every bit as impressive as that of a dozen years ago or leave them up the creek without a paddle.

"If we get involved in a really physical, set-piece driven, one-on-one conflict with the Springboks – well, it's the sort of thing they'll enjoy," said the New Zealander in charge of the Lions' forward effort. "We'll be looking to move them around the field, go through lots of phases and ask some questions of their tight five. I believe we have the people to do this. It just so happens that a lot of the combinations from our two best performances of the tour so far, in Johannesburg and here in Durban, are together for this match."

Gatland was referring to the Brian O'Driscoll-Jamie Roberts axis in midfield, the Stephen Jones-Mike Phillips link at half-back and the freshly-minted partnership in the engine room of the scrum between Paul O'Connell, the captain, and Alun Wyn Jones, the form lock forward in the party. These six players have been wrapped in cotton wool since the victory over the Kwazulu-Natal Sharks in this city 10 days ago, and rightly so, particularly in the case of the centres, who have only two completely dependable shoulder joints between them.

Of the remainder of the starting line-up, the front-rowers Gethin Jenkins and Lee Mears have been kept off-limits for the last week and a half, as have the No 8 Jamie Heaslip and the full-back Lee Byrne. Only Ugo Monye, the left wing from Harlequins, started the chaotic game against an over-aggressive Southern Kings team in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday, and had Shane Williams been fully fit, he would not have had to bother. Alone of the chosen XV, Monye has featured in each of the last two matches.

The Lions have been resting from a position of strength, the Boks from a position of weakness. South Africa have not played a Test since they swamped England 42-6 at Twickenham last November, they have a number of players – Ruan Pienaar, Jean de Villiers, Adrian Jacobs – short of fitness and even more short of form. Only the Pretoria-based Bulls contingent, who won the Super 14 title in such jaw-dropping fashion three weeks ago, can be said to be in 24-carat condition.

Unfortunately for the tourists, that contingent includes Bakkies Botha, Victor Matfield, Pierre Spies, Fourie du Preez and Bryan Habana, at least four of whom (and possibly all five) might lay fair claim to being the world's outstanding players in their positions.

It was little wonder, then, that Gatland's opposite number in the Springbok camp, Gary Gold, should have spent much of yesterday insisting that the home side were far from underdone. "I don't think we're short of game time at all," said the former London Irish coach. "Most of the guys have played 13 gruelling weeks of Super 14 rugby, and some of them have played 15 weeks of it.

"It is interesting that this 'underdone' tag is being thrown around about us when 12 months ago, Wales came here and told us how tired they were after playing a very long season back home.

"We are raring to go. We have established combinations, people who know each other very well. I'd much rather be where we are now, rather than have played three or four games and picked up three or four key injuries."

Gatland, who led Wales on that tour last summer, was among the Lions staff who met Bryce Lawrence, the Test referee from New Zealand, for the important eve-of-match discussion. The tourists sought clarification in two prime areas: the breakdown, where the new Springbok open-side flanker Heinrich Brussow is expected to be a serious thorn in the Lions' flesh, and the scrum.

Lawrence is not one of life's set-piece connoisseurs, and there are fears that the Lions' superiority in this department might not be allowed to bear fruit.

"Bryce says he wants a contest at the breakdown," Gatland reported. "We're also keen to have a good contest at the scrum. He wants head and shoulders to be above waist height, which is fair enough, and he wants people to listen to his engagement call and hit square. That's fine. All we're asking is that the dominant scrum is rewarded, because we intend that dominance to be ours."

Should the Lions achieve that superiority, they will cramp the style of Spies, a freakishly fast No 8, and the electrifying Du Preez, whose mastery of the scrum-half position grows by the day.

There are any number of ifs and buts to take into account, but the pre-tour notion that this match will see the Lions at their strongest and the Boks at their most vulnerable remains the best guess. O'Connell's men by half a dozen? If it happens, we are assured of one of the great series in modern rugby history.