Pollock had a relatively quiet game for Northampton in the Champions Cup final against Bordeaux-Begles, Pete Samu’s club. As a result, Samu - who played in UBB’s loss to Toulouse the Top 14 final at the weekend - might have a few ideas how to shut him down. However, it does appear the French effectively made up a load of nonsense about Pollock to fire up their own players. After the game, the French accused Pollock of calling them “mercenaries”, much to the bemusement of Pollock, who had made no such claim. The end justified the means as Samu’s side won the final, and although the Wallabies aren’t likely to repeat that psychological tactic they will surely now call Samu into the squad to tap into his knowledge about what they did to keep Pollock out of the game. Reasons for Schmidt to be cheerful The sight of an Australian Super Rugby scrum winning the set-piece battle with the British and Irish Lions in the first half - they were unlucky not to get a few penalty calls - was eye-catching, Again, as we highlighted last week, the surprising issue for the Lions was the tighthead side, and Irish veteran Tadhg Furlong. The Force’s Tom Robertson did his Wallabies hopes no harm at all with that display, and Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt would have also taken note of how the Lions struggled to come to terms with Ben O’Keeffe’s early breakdown rulings. O’Keeffe has the whistle for the first Test and is clearly not going to tolerate the Lions’ attempts to slow the ball down under pressure. Eddie smacked in Japan