The Lions' spin was in overdrive yesterday as a disgracefully stage-managed campaign was launched to deflect attention from the real issue facing the tourists.
You may score more points than Clive Woodward but you never beat him. That was the case last year when he reacted to England's second straight shellacking from the All Blacks by jumping off the deep end over Simon Shaw's sending-off. This time it was an apparent spear tackle on the captain Brian O'Driscoll which lit the fuse of outrage.
So when yesterday Woodward, O'Driscoll and the king of spin Alastair Campbell took turns expressing their indignation at the treatment meted out to the skipper, it was hard to escape a feeling this was a diversionary tactic. Woodward had got it horribly wrong, has done all trip and needed to switch some serious focus.
That was how New Zealand treated the Lions' wailings. The country ignored them and hailed one of the great All Black performances. Let's face it, if an honourable chap from South Africa could not find fault after staring at a video of the incident, who were we to question him?
The Lions' roar of disapproval over the apparent misdeeds of Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu rated a brief mention on the national television news. But no more than that. Besides, wasn't it a Lion that copped a suspension out of the match for biting? This was, after all, an epic All Blacks performance in quite atrocious conditions and it was hailed as such across the nation's media.
"Lion tamers" was the front-page headline of the Herald On Sunday, and the Sunday Star-Times led its sports pages with "Black with a Vengeance". The tabloid Sunday News splashed "The Future is Black" beneath a scoreline of "Tigers 21 Lions 3".
The leading Kiwi pundits in the Sundays had not had the chance to chew over the O'Driscoll incident but were unanimous in their verdict on the All Blacks' superiority. The former national coach Laurie Mains, who had predicted before they arrived that this might be the worst Lions team to tour New Zealand, continued his heavy criticism.
"The Lions are fortunate it wasn't dry. If it had been it would have been a rout," he wrote, also taking a swipe at an increasingly annoying Woodward trend: "I am amazed at the amount of spin he puts on his press conferences."
The former All Black captain Taine Randell, also writing in the Sunday News, said the "All Black performance in the big wet was as good as it gets" and highlighted a clear edge to the New Zealanders in the number seven jersey where Richie McCaw outshone Neil Back.
The former Test lock Andy Haden, in the same paper, picked up on the dissatisfaction that will be ringing around Wales and said: "It was a poor effort from a Lions side that looked dispirited."
In the Herald On Sunday the one-time New Zealand captain Sean Fitzpatrick labelled it "one of the best All Black performances I have ever seen". In the same paper the former All Black hard man Richard Loe said: "Our pack is just too mobile and too skilled. They squeezed the Lions defensively - ironic because the Lions were supposed to squeeze us."
The former All Blacks outhalf Grant Fox was probably the lone Kiwi voice holding out some hope for Woodward's roadshow. "I am still reluctant to write off the tourists just yet," he wrote in the Sunday Star-Times. "A wounded animal is always dangerous." We await the response from Woodward, and no doubt the spin that will come with it.
Guardian Service
