No one needs telling that a hugely significant, revealing game of rugby union is fast approaching. For both South Africa and the British & Irish Lions the practical implications of success and failure are obvious enough to require few Shakespearean speeches. Even more crucial, perhaps, will be whether the two sides can salvage what remains of the sport’s honour at the end of a uniquely dispiriting week. Even beneath a clear blue Cape sky, there is an unusually rancorous feel in the air. Whether by accident or design – and regardless of the series outcome – rugby has been thrust into a cancel culture-style war which will have no long-term winners. When a World Cup-winning coach goes viral on social media with an hour-long video monologue blaming unfair refereeing for handicapping his side, what price the immutable oval-ball values of sportsmanship and respect? The reaction in South Africa to the unprecedented bleating from Rassie Erasmus – and his good mate Jaco Johan – following the Springboks’ 22-17 first Test loss has been almost as startling. Rare has been any hint of impartiality or acknowledgment that referees might be human and that not every call massively favoured the Lions. The recurring suggestions that a black South African captain was basically ignored while the visiting skipper Alun Wyn Jones was indulged are also serious and, potentially, even more divisive. It is all a million miles away from the feelgood glow of South Africa’s 2019 Rugby World Cup triumph when the sight of Siya Kolisi hoisting the Webb Ellis Cup into the late evening sky in Yokohama was truly an image for the ages. Maybe therein lies the root of the problem. Could it be that Erasmus has grown so accustomed to winning that, having been involved in virtually no international rugby since then, he simply cannot countenance the possibility of a sudden descent? Either way, smart individuals such as Erasmus and Boks’ assistant coach Mzwandile Stick appear in danger of losing the plot. Whether or not they were hard done by in the first Test – and the decision not to sinbin Hamish Watson in the second half was definitely a let off for the Lions – the subsequent reaction has been way over the top. When Stick insists the Lions started it all – by querying the eve-of-series appointment of a South African, Marius Jonker, as TMO – he is grasping the wrong end of his surname. So far removed is all this whinging from the uplifting traditions upon which Lions folklore is based that, at first, it makes you want to weep. The next emotion is a sincere sense of sadness that it has come to this. If we are honest something like this has been brewing in a sport where half a dozen different penalties could conceivably be awarded at every breakdown. With the camera angles immediately available to the TMO also now vital, the margins for players are tighter than ever. Hence the increasing temptation for a tech-savvy coach to package up a few clips and invite the ever-impartial jury of social media to turn a molehill into Table Mountain. No one, to be clear, is completely exonerating World Rugby; this was always going to be a tinderbox of a series and not being able to whistle up a neutral TMO replacement after the original choice pulled out was tempting fate. It is only fair, too, to speculate that, had the Lions lost the first Test, the conversations with Saturday’s referee, Ben O’Keeffe from New Zealand, might have been slightly different in tone. But the Lions did not lose, opening up the traditionally brutal scenario of an embattled Springbok side caught between Cape Town’s most famous rock and a depressingly hard place. Win the second Test and, for the first time since Jeremy Guscott joyously bisected the distinctive black-and-white uprights in Durban with his drop-goal in the second Test in 1997, the Lions will have chiselled out an unbeatable 2-0 series lead. Not without good reason, then, did the Lions forwards’ coach Robin McBryde reveal that his pre-match reading is a book called Ja-Nee written by Dugald Macdonald, the former Oxford University and South Africa No 8. Macdonald won just one cap for the Boks but his debut coincided with the second Test of the 1974 Lions series when the touring side, as now, were 1-0 up. The match was dubbed the most important game in South African history and encouraged a furious physical response, not least in the third Test which subsequently become known as The Battle of Boet Erasmus. It was the match in which the Lions activated their infamous ‘99’ call to offer collective protection to any players set upon by their opponents. Amid the chaos, the lock Gordon Brown punched his opponent Johan de Bruyn so hard he dislodged the latter’s glass eye, prompting 30 players and the referee to pause hostilities and collectively start looking for it. While history now records that the Lions won both games – 28-9 and 26-9 respectively – and disciplinary excesses are now more heavily punished, McBryde does not foresee the modern Boks settling meekly for second best. “They will go back to that physical nature,” predicted McBryde. “It’s what they did in 1974 after losing that first Test and I’m sure that’s what they’ll be looking to do on Saturday: to get stuck into us. It’s not going to be easy, is it?” With the Lions adamant Dan Biggar will start at fly-half and that each stage of his return-to-play concussion protocols has been properly undertaken, it is also a short-odds bet that South Africa will again seek to make inroads via contestable high kicks and a forward-dominated 6-2 bench, banking on the Lions conceding kickable penalties and wilting under more of the self-inflicted pressure that hampered their efforts in the opening 40 minutes of the series. The reality, though, is that both sides still have improvement left in them. If the score is still close with 20 minutes remaining, the Lions hope their collective fitness will again be evident and deliver just their third victorious series in South Africa since 1896. “We believe we can go out and put in a performance that will win us the test match and the series,” insisted the Scotland captain Stuart Hogg, quietly encouraged by the motivational influence of both Jones and Owen Farrell this week. If O’Keeffe’s refereeing barely receives a mention afterwards, so much the better.