Ben Mowen relishes loss of Lions' lineout king Paul O'Connell Australia forward Ben Mowen says it will take a massive effort by the Lions to cover for the loss of a great player like Paul O'Connell. WALLABIES lineout caller Ben Mowen believes the British and Irish Lions face a major challenge to overcome the loss of veteran Irish second-rower Paul O'Connell for the second Test in Melbourne on Saturday night. O'Connell sustained the injury towards the end of the Lions' 23-21 win over the Wallabies in the first Test in Brisbane last Saturday night and has been ruled out for the rest of the tour. Regarded as the Victor Matfield of the northern hemisphere, O'Connell is one of the best lineout tacticians in the game. The Lions have struggled in the set-piece in the matches he has not played on tour. "Potentially, that could be a big challenge for them," Mowen said. They have got good cover. I believe they will go with (Geoff) Parling in that role. When you look at the side they had on the field, he is obviously a huge general for them. He has massive respect from both sides. When you lose a player of that calibre it does take a massive effort to cover for him. He ran their lineout extremely well on the night ... made it very difficult to get any defensive pressure on them. He is staying with the squad. They will still use all of his experience right up to game day. While the Wallabies were unable to steal any lineout ball from the Lions, they did manage to force them to throw it to the front which was where they would have preferred it to go to launch their attack. "A huge strength in the way Warren Gatland-coached teams have played is they like being able to pick through the tail at the lineout and use big guys to carry over the advantage line," Mowen said. The more we can limit that momentum allows us to get a three-phase shut-down, where defensively we can start to dictate what they do and can't do after three phases. We'll look to adjust our plan because we can't let them just have the ball all the time. But there is certainly an overall plan that we will stick to that hopefully will give us the end result. While Mowen was disappointed with the result, he would have been satisfied with his performance in his Test debut, which he had waited a long time for. "It was really good," Mowen said. It would have been better if we had snuck a win, but the intensity was right up there. That was the best atmosphere I've ever played in. A really exciting game. One of the features of Mowen's performance was his ability to "tag" Lions halfback Mike Phillips and prevent him from making damaging runs around the fringes of the breakdown. "We knew he (Phillips) was going to be a huge part of the way they wanted to attack," Mowen said. I don't think moving through the series it is going to be any different. Both nines look for holes and we are going to have to make sure we plug them. I was pretty happy I got to tag him a couple of times. But there was a scrum inside their 22 and he made us pay by making a quick dart. In Test match footy one opportunity is all those guys need. Mowen said the sudden-death nature of the second Test would heighten the Wallabies' resolve. "We were extremely desperate to get the result last week, but are well aware come the 80th minute on Saturday night, if we don't have the result, it's gone," Mowen said. That's a really disappointing thought to think about. That's been a huge motivation for the way the guys have prepared themselves since Saturday night. We have done everything right up until this point. We've got to refresh ourselves and rip in on Thursday and Friday because it's all on the line. Even though Kurtley Beale missed a last-minute shot at penalty goal, Mowen said the Wallabies were buoyed by the fact they had put themselves in a position to win the game, especially after losing half of their backline to injury. "We dropped four or five guys and ended up with an openside flanker playing inside centre," Mowen said. To give ourselves a shot at winning it at the end speaks loads about the group.