SWEET AS
Fortress Eden Park
The last time the All Blacks lost on the beloved Eden Park, winger Rieko Ioane had not even been born.
The side just owns the ground. No-one can get within a sniff of the team on the fortress.
Teams coming to this ground have little confidence of winning. The men in black tend to grow another leg when they run on to the hallowed turf.
Beauden bang-on
If there is a player who can turn a game, can cough up that piece of magic which brings the difference between winning and losing it is Beauden Barrett.
Has the pace to edge ahead of his opponents and picks just the right moment to unleash his talents or those outside him.
The Lions have a quick rushing defence, but will it be fast enough to stop the electric, mercurial Barrett?
And these men will be champing at the bit. In the match for the Crusaders against the British and Irish Lions, the red and blacks were seriously short-changed. They dominated the scrum but the French referee did not see it that way.
So the likes of Joe Moody and Owen Franks will have paybackon their mind when the firstscrum packs down. Look out for fireworks.
PANIC STATIONS
Rusty as
No matter how good a player is, no matter how many times he has been around the block, one has to have match fitness.
Match fitness is not just about having the aerobic capacity to play the game for 80 minutes at top pace.
It is about being sharp with the ball in hand and doing the instinctive things well.
So All Black captain Kieran Read may be a class footballer and has played 97 tests but there is no way he can get anywhere near his top game tomorrow night. Not after playing just a handful of games in the past six months.
Heavens above
Right, this is Auckland in 2017. There have been cyclones, floods, high winds.
So chances are, with the way the weather has been rolling in the City of Sails, it will rain tomorrow night.
One side is going to profit from the rain falling and it is not going to be the All Blacks. If it does rain, the Lions will lap it up.
They will just batter away and keep the ball close. That is easy to do when the ball is wet.
The All Blacks ‘style of counterattack and continuity is way harder with a greasy ball.
No Dane, plenty of pain
Now Codie Taylor is a trier and runs hard.
But he is not Dane Coles. Then again no-one is.The Hurricanes hooker has been a key part of the All Blacks line-up in the past four years.
His athletic ability and all-round skills have opened up plenty of attacking chances for the All Blacks.
The All Blacks are going to miss him big time. Now is the time for Taylor to step up.