Chessum faces biggest challenge in rival Skelton as Lions await ‘different beast'

The Guardian

3 days ago

The visiting dressing rooms at the Melbourne Cricket Ground are more spacious than most. Big enough to accommodate the red army of British & Irish Lions players, coaches and backroom staff – the entire tour party is now almost 100-strong – but short on cosy intimacy. And when the players walk out into this iconic arena with 90,000-odd fans filling the distant stands they will feel even smaller.
The field of play is such a vast expanse that the Australian Rules footballers who roam here can cover up to 17 kilometres during a single game. When it hosts rugby matches the participants are so far away from their audience they are almost in a different postcode. People like to talk about there being nowhere to hide in top-level sport and, outside a heavyweight boxing ring, there are few better examples.
Spare a thought, then, for anyone preparing to make their first Lions Test start. Against opposition so motivated you can smell the desperation. And against a direct adversary, in the mountainous Will Skelton, who hits harder than a St Kilda-bound tram. For the incoming Ollie Chessum this is truly a massive game in every respect.
So when the 24-year-old forward says he is 'properly looking forward to it' all you can do is admire his unflinching Lincolnshire chutzpah. And if the Wallabies are viewing him as a possible weak link in the injury absence of big Joe McCarthy they are overlooking one crucial detail. Some players shrink when the going gets tough but the competitive Chessum is the opposite.
Simply to reach where he is now has involved immense perseverance and no little pain. At Carre's Grammar School in Sleaford they barely had enough players to form a rugby team; at 18 he was told he wasn't good enough by Leicester and ended up at Nottingham in the Championship. Even after fighting his way back up the greasy pole to earn himself a professional contract back at the Tigers, he has had to overcome a string of ill-timed injuries that would have broken others.
But maybe having completed all those hard yards is precisely why he is now an established England international and a Test Lion. Leicester's now-departed Australian coach Michael Cheika used to speak admiringly about the 'dog' in Chessum and the latter's consistent refusal to back down has also now secured Andy Farrell's seal of approval at a critical juncture in the series.
The Wallabies will certainly be encountering a pumped-up opponent with a clear-eyed appreciation of the hosts' backs-to-the-wall mentality. As Chessum puts it: 'They're going to draw on every emotional aspect of this game they can. They are 1-0 down in the series but they are at the MCG, in front of their fans, with the series on the line. They're going to throw the kitchen sink at us.'
What Cheika taught him last season above all else, however, was the power of collective belief. While there are still days when he has to pinch himself – 'The whole impostor syndrome can very much be a thing. You think, 'How on earth did I get here?'' – the mantra of the ex-Wallaby coach still rings in his ears. 'He taught the Leicester squad last year that if you don't believe, you won't go anywhere. And if you do believe, you can do things you never imagined. That's something Cheika taught me: to properly believe in what you're doing.'
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All that remains is to put that into practice, just as Tom Curry and Tadhg Beirne did last week by bossing the first big collision and silencing the home crowd. 'We knew from then on that the tone was set, for us and for them. I expect no different this week; in fact I expect it to go up another level. Maro [Itoje] has said to us that what we produced last Saturday will not be good enough this Saturday. There's a whole different beast coming down the road and we'll have to front up and tackle it head on.'
As looming threats go, there are certainly few more imposing adversaries than Skelton, who sat out the first Test with a strained calf. 'I think he's going to bring the physical edge we expect to see from the Wallabies this weekend,' predicts Chessum. 'He is just a huge human being ... you try stopping someone who is (almost) 150 kilos. I've played against Will in a Champions Cup with Leicester away at La Rochelle and it didn't end well for us that day.'
But this a Lions series and, at 1-0 up, Chessum and co are in no mood to be pushed around. 'This is everything you have ever dreamed of. There's no better time to walk towards the challenge ... you'd be kicking yourself for years down the line if you didn't. I'm chomping at the bit to get into it and I think everyone else is as well.' The bigger the challenge, the more the 'Lincolnshire Lion' loves it.