The Great Britain Lions play the latest match of their tour of New Zealand on Saturday when they collide with the Kiwis for the second time in as many weeks. New Zealand guaranteed a share of the series with a win last week and can scoop the full honours with another win here.
Great Britain head to Christchurch needing to win not just to level this series but to avoid the tour being a complete car crash after defeat to Tonga in their opening match, and another daunting challenge against Papua New Guinea next week.
New Zealand
It wasn’t the best match of rugby league last week but nobody in the New Zealand will give a hoot given that they came out on top of it. They deserved that too. If you look at the bare scoring then they won two tries to one but actually they offered up more than just that. They were solid in defence and had enough chances to win the match a lot easier than they did. When you consider where they were at the end of the Australia game the week before that was no mean effort.
This is the third week of this international run for the Kiwis and generally sides improve week on week at this level so I’m expecting their best performance of the lot in this one. There is still a lot more to come from the New Zealanders and I would be surprised if we don’t see some as that, as there won’t be many more times they are together before the World Cup in two years.
Great Britain
For all the hype and intrigue surrounding this tour when it was announced, there is no doubting that this has been a massive disappointment thus far. In many ways it started out as a shambles when a load of Australian born players were included in the squad and it hasn’t really got a lot better since they landed in New Zealand. Now a spate of injuries are threatening to turn a tour which hasn’t got going on the pitch to a pretty big embarrassment.
The big surprise on this tour so far has been the shortage of points the Lions have scored. They are yet to make double figures in any match on the Tour thus far and although they have been strong enough defensively, the strength of any British side is the dynamic, passionate attacking play they show. That has not been evident in this side and if it doesn’t arrive here, it is hard to see how they come out on top.
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Team News
New Zealand will make a couple of changes to this match. Kodi Nikorima has been replaced while Kieran Foran misses out with injury. Brandon Smith and Shaun Johnson comes back into the side for this second game.
Great Britain are without four players who came on this tour with them due to injury. Zak Hardaker, Joe Philbin, Oliver Gildart and Ryan Hall have all missed out which means that Blake Austin will be on the wing. Jack Hughes will fill in at centre.
Betting
I took the under on the points in the first game between these two last week and while I don’t think we’re going to get as few as 20pts again here I don’t see us getting more than 36 either. The Great Britain attack just doesn’t look like scoring enough points to get a win let alone a high scoring one but in fairness their defence has stood up well over the two games they have played on this tour.
I see much of the same as last week here. I see two decent defences going at it and while I expect New Zealand to win the match, I’m less convinced they cover an 8-10pt handicap but based on the troubles Great Britain have had in scoring on this tour I’m confident the under will land. GB have only scored 14pts in two matches so far. Unless they better than tally in this match we’ll struggle to see 36.5pts so I’m happy enough to take the under.
Tips
WON – Back Under 36.5pts for a 4/10 stake at 1.91 with Betfair
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