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Did the cause of the veteran ever have a better weekend? In the sad absence of Michael Jackson, the two greatest men on the planet are quite clearly Bruce Springsteen and Simon Shaw. The former is now only two years away from his 60tth birthday but my mate Michael tells me that the greatest rocker of all time was in magnificent form at both Glastonbury and Hyde Park, and I can hardly wait to part company with dear old South Africa to catch Bruce in the latter stages of his tour. Indeed, such is the urgency that I have even deigned to go to Glasgow.

Shaw was something else. Or in fact, he wasn't. He was everything he has always been and everything that I knew he would be. The only difference was that he was everything for about 15 minutes longer than either Shaw or the Lions coaches expected.

The truth was that with the absolutely shocking run of injuries which the Lions suffered, there was no way that they could take off the great man. Did anyone ever give such a performance in a losing cause? He was unbelievable with the ball in hand, his line-out work was excellent, he nagged the hell out of South Africa at close quarters and he made the formerly-rated Bakkies Botha look like some kind of mincing waste of time.

Any South Africans uninitiated might have wondered where on earth he came from. Anyone who has ever left Shaw out of any team at any time must have felt appropriately embarrassed last Saturday.

And while we are on the subject of I-told-you-so, what about the player once known as The Beast. All last week, people in the media and faithful Rolling Maul readers were trying to tell me what an absolutely wonderful scrummager this man is, and how the fact that he was on top last week meant that Phil Vickery was finished.

Frankly, The Beast was embarrassing last Saturday. Adam Jones forced him up in all three of the opening scrums and it was unbelievably fortunate for South Africa both that there were so few scrums, and also that the scrum was de-powered in the second half. Back to the drawing board, Beast.

The overrule

No team was ever so unfortunate as were the Lions in Pretoria. Their scrum was dominant, and then they lost both props in the same move. The heart of their team was the midfield, and then they lost both centres in quick succession. And what about one incident hardly remarked upon amongst all the talking points and all the glories of a quite magnificent Test match, in which not least of the virtues on show was the resilience of the Springboks.

At one line-out, the referee and the touch judge stood almost together. The ball was thrown in, certainly no more crooked than most throws, Simon Shaw caught it, inevitably, and the Lions drove it forward. The referee was happy and trotted off after the action. Then the touch judge decided that the throw was crooked. Remember that both officials had roughly the same angle on the throw. Please tell me how on earth the referee allowed himself to be overruled when he had a clear sight of the action.

Inevitably, too, the decisive Springbok try came immediately afterwards. On a Lions tour absolutely everything from a list of 100 requirements has to be delivered.

Farewell Gus