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20 hours ago
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Dan Sheehan freely admits that his Superman dive for the British & Irish Lions’ first try in Melbourne last week was not out of the playbook. It was an instinctive finish to avoid getting “melted”, putting the Lions on the board in Melbourne and taking the hooker’s remarkable season tally to 17 in 19 games.
It has been eclipsed by the furore over Jac Morgan’s late clearout, but there is debate over whether Sheehan’s try was legal. He acknowledges the controversy but sees no problem with his crucial score all the while admitting some sympathy with Wallaby defenders.
The debate centres on the lawbook’s insistence that players cannot jump to avoid a tackle. After he was rebuffed by Australia with a tap and go not long before, Sheehan was given another chance in the 15th minute and dived over his opposite number, Dave Porecki. As he was in the act of scoring, the referee, Andrea Piardi, awarded the try.
A World Rugby clarification issued in 2022 states that: “A ball carrier may dive with the ball in order to score a try, and we all agree that should be allowed. From an equity perspective, if they do so, a defender may attempt to make a safe and legal tackle on that player.”
In other words, Australia defenders were permitted to tackle Sheehan when he was airborne but because Porecki and James Slipper had both gone low they were left floundering. The Wallabies’ head coach, Joe Schmidt, questioned how his players could have tackled Sheehan safely but stopped short of claiming the try should have been disallowed.
“I can see all the controversy about it, but I did know that you can dive in the air if you score,” said Sheehan. “I’m not sure actually if I missed the line would it be a penalty or not? I feel like I was at full stretch and landed over the line so why not? It would have been a penalty as well probably if they actually caught me high. It’s a tough job in professional rugby.
“It was not the play. The play was trying to get as close to the line as possible for the second phase. I just thought in my head I got melted in the first one and didn’t get much out of it, that there has to be a bit of an opportunity over the top.
“I took the first [tap and go] and I got absolutely melted trying to go low. Usually, one lad goes low and someone maybe is high and I just got both shoulders melted low and I didn’t really get much out of it. Then the second one I just thought: ‘If I have a dive here …’ I didn’t know if they had anyone in the back. It was just a throw and hope and I slipped through.”
Sheehan’s try-scoring performance in Melbourne was key to the Lions wrapping up the series and backed up pre-match claims by fellow front-rower Jamie George that the Irishman is the best hooker, if not one of the best players, in the world. Sheehan has hit it off with George, as well as Luke Cowan-Dickie, and has conceded it will be a strange feeling renewing rivalries in next year’s Six Nations.
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“I didn’t know anyone well on a personal level before coming into the squad,” added Sheehan. “I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Dickie [Luke Cowan-Dickie] and Jamie George on the back of it. Two people I’ve obviously come up against a few times, but also looked up to when I was in my school days. It’s been really nice to get to know them.
“And then there’s a few lads your own age that you’ve sort of come up through age-grades like Ollie Chessum, Ben Earl who have been a great craic around it. Seeing different sides of people where you’re not hating them all the time. It’s pretty, not surprising, you’re growing up hating these lads and then all of a sudden, you’re like, everyone’s a pretty good fella.” Sheehan picks out the post-match celebrations after Saturday’s series-clinching victory as the highlight of his tour but after a prearranged day off for the squad on Monday, the switch was flicked on Tuesday as the Lions set about preparing to complete a 3-0 whitewash over the Wallabies in Sydney on Saturday.
“It’s different if the series was in the balance but I think we’ve always been pretty clear on our goals,” he said. “At the start of the campaign, [the goal] was to go unbeaten overseas and win the series 3-0. There’s a lot of people who’ve put a lot of effort into travelling out for this game and a lot of our families will be here, so there’s plenty of motivation on the line and I can only imagine what the Australians are feeling now as well. We need to make sure that we show up. We are searching for an 80-minute performance this week and we have the ability to do it.”
