Can't split em: Opposing captains Kieran Read of the All Blacks and Sam Warburton of the Lions. Credit:Getty Images But those of us who have neither feelings nor soul saw something different in Eden Park. Fifteen minutes of the All Blacks, after two flat performances, finally turning it on. Followed by a French referee, Monsieur Romain Poite, deciding that this looked all too much like rugby players stealing his big moment. Followed by M. Poite giving the Lions penalty after sympathy penalty so they could kick themselves back into the game. Followed by the All Blacks dropping ball after ball as they dared to try to score five-pointers. Followed by more Lions penalty goals.

Followed by the most bizarre conclusion imaginable: M. Poite, after a whole night, nay, a whole career of deciding matches with his whistle, undergoing a final-minute Damscene conversion, in which he decided that he had been wrong all his life, it was a crime for refereeing decisions to play the central role, leading to him spontaneously reinterpreting the rules of rugby so as not to give the All Blacks the putative match-winning penalty (which, from how Beauden Barrett was kicking, the Kiwi would probably have missed anyway). The match certainly was unforgettable. But for those of us who never had the red-headed girl to remember, the game delivered more of the disappointment that rugby is uniquely able to serve up. So much occasion, so much magnificence, so much overheated ruggerism, and in the end? In the end it was the kind of dream where the red-head is gazing at you with dewy come-hither eyes and you walk up the steps of the pergola, only for the redhead to tear off her wig to reveal a balding middle-aged Frenchman! And your clumsy attempt at a kiss, he's now referring to the TMO! Maybe it's just me. But the good news: the redprint for the Wallabies.

One. Let the All Blacks take all the risks. The Lions not only didn't score a try, they didn't get close to scoring one. They didn't even get close to thinking about scoring one. What they relied on was a rope-a-dope of staunch defence – and staunch it was – until the All Blacks dropped the ball. And dropped it. If they are the Paganinis of rugby, on this night you wouldn't have backed them to keep a hold of their bow. Two. Pray that the All Blacks maintain their current form. A New Zealand friend told me after the match that he didn't want M. Poite to give the All Blacks that penalty anyway, because they didn't deserve to win after their nervous, impatient, error-strewn play throughout the match and the series. A draw was a just humiliation. This is a particularly first-world, philosophical Kiwi attitude. Punish your team if they don't win everything, all the time, by a mile. Three. Reinvent your positions. Maro Itoje is a once-in-a-generation second-rower, destined to change the way his position is played. Not only does Itoje fulfil all the usual duties of his role, but he catches and runs the ball with the skill of a back. It doesn't stop there. Not content with being a stand-out for the Lions, Itoje also played half the game for the All Blacks, lining up among their runners at fly-half, inside-centre, even scrum-half. In the line-outs, his voice was loudest among every All Black call. But wait, there was more. Itoje was also the referee, signalling infringements, waving his arms, standing in M. Poite's way while politely informing him of each All Black transgression. This was total rugby. Four. Itoje wasn't the only one. The Lions had 15 referees on the field, and their seven replacements were even better. The key to a triumphant draw with New Zealand: a swarm of referees. Five. Put your head in the way of a swinging arm. Something weird is happening in rugby. If you slip, dive or duck, so that the man tackling you bops you in the melon, you win the jackpot. Jerome Kaino was yellow-carded in Auckland for someone else slipping. In Wellington, someone else slipped before Sonny Bill Williams tackled him, and poor SBW, having done nothing different from anything anyone's done ever, found himself red-carded and put out of the game for as long as Richie Porte is out of the Tour de France. Difference is, Porte was the one who slipped. But in rugby, same result. If 15 Wallabies can slip over at the critical moment and put their heads in the way of 15 All Black arms, we're onto something!

Six. Spirit. Here's where you have to applaud the Lions, genuinely. Maybe they didn't know they were not good enough to beat the All Blacks, but they all played as if they knew it, and they played as a single unit. They spoiled, they defended, they confused. They came, they saw, they drew. They were beaten on skill, beaten on pace, beaten on imagination, and utterly trounced at both ball-in-hand rugby and ball-falling-out-of-hand rugby. But they overcame all this through their unity, which is a pretty fine thing when you consider that for 46 months per quadrennium, they all hate each other's guts. When you look back at many of the great Australian wins over New Zealand in the past, this unified humility has been a common thread. Winning rugby matches when they do not have the ball has been a historic Wallabies speciality, and the Lions have reminded them how to do it. All they need is for New Zealand to play with ambition but without composure, to put their heads in the way of high shots, to spoil and defend and kick penalties, to perform as a full squad of assistant referees, and for the Bledisloe matches to be officiated by middle-aged men undergoing existential crises ... and we're back to our glory days. It's quite an art.

