Lions choices

Yesterday's Heineken Cup semi-final made one choice for the Lions coaching staff: Stephen Jones is going to be the starting number 10. It's possibly left them with a decision too - Quinlan went, quite clearly, and gouged the Leinster captain's eyes. If he gets the ban he should for it, he won't be touring, so who will replace him?

ROG was a great fly-half. He is still a good one, but something has changed. Two years ago, if Munster or Ireland were under pressure, ROG was unflappable, and would kick the ball down the field and relieve the pressure. He hardly ever made a mistake, and if he did it was never in a critical part of the field. Yesterday, however, Leinster put the pressure on and ROG crumbled. To my mind, and recorded in this blog, he looked rather like that during the 6N too. I don't know what it is, maybe he's just old enough he's lost a step or two and so he's getting hit more, maybe he's just accumulated enough bumps that his rhythm is off, but whatever it is, that imperious control has gone. It can come - as it can for anyone - when the people around him are playing well, but when they're playing less than brilliantly he looks frail. Playing against the Boks in South Africa you know the fly half will be under pressure. He'll be under pressure to tackle, to kick, to cope with bad ball, and more and he's just not delivering. If McGeechan et al are insane enough to write his name in that slot the 6, 8, 10, 12 in green will be rubbing their hands together and hammering through that slot knowing that ROG will crumble, and if you can kill the number 10 then you stop the whole team playing at once.

Jones can have a bad day of course, but the question is more, can ROG have a good one, can he really be exposed in the hope that he'll suddenly have a good one, when the other way round it's probably less likely that Jones will have a bad one than it is that ROG will have a good one.