Morning:
8°c
Lions captain Paul O'Connell and some of his key men know if they impress against the Sharks in Durban tonight, they can almost certainly book their place in the XV for the First Test at the same ground.
O'Connell, fellow lock Alun-Wyn Jones, No8 Jamie Heaslip, flankers Tom Croft and David Wallace, hooker Lee Mears, scrum-half Mike Phillips, centres Brian O'Driscoll and Jamie Roberts plus full-back Lee Byrne will all start tonight confident only injury or a dramatic loss of form can keep them out of the Test match.
That leaves five spots to be filled and those players will come from Saturday's Western Province match, with Andrew Sheridan, Phil Vickery, Ugo Monye, Tommy Bowe and Stephen Jones the men who are expected to cement their places.
So far, the tour management have kept to their promise of giving every player an opportunity to claim one of the starting places in the Test side but that has now changed. Time is running out for the tour party and they have just two matches in which to fashion a team capable of winning the first of three titanic battles with South Africa.
Simon Shaw, Euan Murray and Martyn Williams started this trip ear-marked for Test duty and it could still happen but at this moment that trio are off the selection pace compared to their nearest rivals.
The match with the Sharks - a powerful side despite missing their Springbok stars - and the equally difficult assignment against Western Province will decide the team for the First Test and those who come up short will take on the Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth next Tuesday.Every Lions tour reaches this tipping point, when reality strikes and individual players either join the list of legends or find themselves in what previous tours called the "dirt trackers XV" - the midweek side.
Having seen the damage caused to the 2005 Lions tour in New Zealand by Clive Woodward's early nomination of the players he wanted on Test duty, head coach Ian McGeechan has gone out of his way to be fair.
Now, though, McGeechan has to be elitist and a number of players have already been pencilled into the XV to face the world champions at Kings Park in 10 days. Of course, the Sharks could defy the weaknesses caused by their missing Springboks and create doubt in McGeechan's mind by upsetting the Lions. The Super 14 outfit still boast four Test players in prop Deon Carstens, ex-Osprey full-back Stefan Terblanche, lock Johann Muller, the captain, and tight-head prop Jannie du Plessis, along with four players who will be in the Emerging Springboks side to face the Lions on 23 June in Cape Town.
Despite three successive wins, the Lions have shown worrying fluctuations in form. With crunch time approaching they must now start dominating the break downs, bullying the opposition scrum and cutting them to pieces in the backs.
