AFTER ALMOST A half of rugby facing intense pressure from the dominant All Blacks, the Lions cut loose at Eden Park.

It was Liam Williams who proved the catalyst, and then some. The Welsh fullback collected a pass inside from Anthony Watson, just outside the Lions’ five-metre line, before sending Kieran Read for The Herald and traversing his own 22. The 26-year-old Scarlets man then exploded through a gap in the New Zealand rearguard, carrying all the way to halfway. A cleverly timed offload in contact invited Jonathan Davies onto the precipice of the Kiwis’ 10-metre line, with the Welsh centre feeding English winger Elliot Daly.

The Wasps flier fed Davies once more, who ran the ball toward a scrambling Beauden Barrett before putting Seán O’Brien over the whitewash about 12 yards in from the touchline.

It was one of the great Lions scores, and brought the tourists back into a game in which, at that juncture, they had played second fiddle to the hosts.

Owen Farrell missed the subsequent conversion, and so the Lions went in at the break trailing 13-8 in Auckland.

‘We were barely finished the Junior Cert and Pete had us in on our summer holidays doing line-outs’