One hope for a host nation up against the best of four Test teams is that the national cliques inside the Lions squad don’t gel, and fractures emerge. This was seen in the 2001 tour.

But captain Maro Itoje said post-game the squad is harmonious, enjoying the tour, and now feeding on the motivation of matching a teammate’s strong performance. Heady stuff.

So what will the Wallabies have learned, sitting in Newcastle, about the strengths and weaknesses of the Lions in the opening two games?

The good news is that both the Force and the Reds exposed areas of opportunity, albeit briefly, and their performances also highlighted areas of the game where the Wallabies (and the Waratahs and Brumbies) must be rock solid.

The Force showed the Lions’ defensive connections are still being worked out, particularly in midfield, and they prised 28 missed tackles out of the red shirts.

That was their first game on tour, to be fair, but the Reds also created defensive problems early in Brisbane when they played second-wave attacking shapes wide, off Hunter Paisami in midfield.

With quick ball, the Reds then played on top of the Lions in tight channels, too, and they scored two good tries.

The Reds fell out of the game when they struggled to exit their half, though, and the Lions muscled up in defence and slowed the Reds’ ruck speed. The usual dominoes then fell in their favour; repeatedly scoring points off Reds’ errors.

The Reds young playmakers struggled under the pressure, but the Wallabies will have identified the rivets that popped.

Asked what strength of the Lions’ game he’d tip to Wallabies coaches, Paisami said: “Just the pressure they put on us at the breakdown. It was really hard. They kind of tackle and lie right on top, and then get back up, which is nothing. We expected that.

“The first 20 minutes, the boys got a bit of momentum, and everyone was throwing bodies at the breakdown. And then we kind of switched off again.”

Reds coach and future Wallabies mentor Les Kiss said the key areas he would advise Wallabies coaches would be the importance of playing at the right end of the field, turning the Lions with short kicks behind their rush defence, and perhaps most crucially, having a bold, 80-minute crack in attack.

“I didn’t say it in there [the press conference], but a couple of times we should have pulled the trigger, and we didn’t,” Kiss said.

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“We stretched them, but yeah, those are the things you try to make sure when you get a chance, you’ve got to go to them.”

The opportunities to disrupt the Lions at the lineout, and particularly at scrum-time, will have also been scribbled down furiously. Also, Lions’ set-pieces have been anything but reliable.

Having been inside the Wallabies camp and also played the Lions, Paisami isn’t reading too much into the tourists so far. The Test series will be a different story, he says, and history buffs will remember the Lions belting the Reds in 2001, too.

“It’s different playing here – there are a lot of young boys here that have never had the experience to play against Test players. Especially game management-wise,” Paisami said.

“The Wallabies definitely have all of that, and the quality and the work ethic as well.”

All nine matches of The British & Irish Lions Tour to Australia are live & on demand on Stan Sport, with Wallabies Tests in 4K. All Test matches live and free on Channel 9 & 9Now.

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