Test run-in starts as Lions kickstart journey on Fury Road against Western Force

The Guardian

a day ago

And so begins a tour-shaping fortnight for the British & Irish Lions in Australia. Starting with the Western Force this weekend they will be playing five matches inside 15 days and covering 5,700km across five different states and territories. By the time they relocate from Adelaide back to Brisbane for the first Test they will have crisscrossed the outback more often than Mad Max in his heyday.
There are so many variables involved that sticking to rigid plans will be nigh-on impossible. Leaving aside the opposition and the travel for a moment there are more than 90 people attached to this Lions expedition once you add in all the backroom staff, bottle washers and comms types. As plate-spinning exercises go it is a major logistical challenge.
The trick, as ever, is to try to locate some order amid the road warrior chaos. On the field that means stress-testing certain combinations with one eye on the Test series kicking off on 19 July, particularly in areas where potential starters have seldom played together. There is no shortage of quasi-religious fervour attached to this tour but precious little time in which to turn water into wine.
Which makes the Force game more significant than it might initially appear. In the wake of last week's defeat by Argentina, Andy Farrell will be looking for reassurance on a few fronts, both up front and behind the scrum. Squint into the Aussie sunshine long enough and it is possible to see this fixture influencing the Test destinies of several players, not least those without an Irish postcode.
The whole raison d'etre of the Lions, it should be stressed, is the notion of familiar home union biases being set aside for the greater good. But if Farrell has a 50-50 selection call to make without much in the way of compelling fresh evidence the logical choice will be to stick with the green-shirted devil he knows. Particularly if this particular matchday squad containing 11 Irish internationals hits the Australian turf running.
Swap in Blair Kinghorn, Jamison Gibson-Park, Maro Itoje and either Tom Curry or Jac Morgan and this might even be somewhere close to the best-balanced starting XV the Lions can field. So if they can click swiftly it will be an appreciable bonus for the management before the entire circus heads east to face the Reds in Brisbane next Wednesday, followed by the Waratahs in Sydney, the Brumbies in Canberra and an Australia and New Zealand invitational XV in Adelaide on 12 July.
Looking down that fixture list those two midweek games against the Reds and the Brumbies, currently Australia's two best-performing Super Rugby sides, may just be the toughest. Neither Super Rugby franchise will be absolutely at full strength but, from a Lions perspective, it could help explain why the tour skipper Itoje does not feature this weekend.
And maybe the traditional rhythms of a Lions tour are changing. What if it is Canberra, rather than Adelaide, where the Lions will quietly unleash their putative Test team – or at least the guts of it? Might it be the kiss of death for the midweek dirt-trackers, AKA the bin juice and the driftwood? Amid the blur that is modern tour scheduling, that concept may have to be mothballed until the game against the First Nations and Pasifika XV in Melbourne between the first and second Tests.
Then again we have not yet factored in injuries, a fact of life when an itinerary becomes this congested. Farrell can only cross his fingers that, in this instance, Finn Russell will dovetail instantly with the fit-again Sione Tuipulotu and the Welsh scrum-half Tomos Williams. And that the Lions lineout, with hooker Dan Sheehan now installed as captain, has a better day. There is already a sense that if the consistently influential Tadhg Beirne has another good game there could well be a slot for him at blindside flanker in the Tests.
Stirred into the mix are plenty of other fascinating questions. Can Henry Pollock make the most of the starting opportunity he has been handed? Ditto Scott Cummings and Joe McCarthy in the second row? And with two big left boots in the back three – both James Lowe and Elliot Daly can kick a long ball – might the Lions look to play a more territorial style of game on occasions?
Even more instructive, perhaps, will be how well the Lions can refine their offloading game and accrue more reward for the promising attacking shape evident at times against the Pumas in Dublin. If things instantly click with Russell wielding the baton and his disparate orchestra combining sweetly from the off no one will be happier than Farrell: 'If you look at it there are key positions that have not played together before so that makes it interesting for us to see how cohesive it can be as a whole.'
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If collective harmony initially proves elusive, though, the Force may feel emboldened. While past history is not particularly encouraging – the Lions beat Western Australia 116-10 in 2001 and defeated the Force 69-17 in 2013 – this is a potentially more resilient home squad containing six current Wallaby squad members.
According to the injured Kurtley Beale, the fast feet of winger Mac Grealy could also pose problems while the 6ft 7in Darcy Swain poses an obvious lineout threat. But prop Ollie Hoskins, most recently on the roster at Saracens, has had to be plucked out of retirement for this contest while the replacement hooker Nic Dolly, capped once by England in 2021, was released by Leicester last year after an injury-plagued couple of seasons.
The slightly sandy base to the pitch may complicate scrummaging life for some but the Lions scrum coach, John Fogarty, is more concerned that visiting players collectively trust their instincts and do not get distracted by murmurs about the Force looking to knock a few lumps out of their visitors. 'Any time you get into a game of rugby you should be expecting to bash someone and get bashed,' responded Fogarty with a knowing smile. 'We're excited about showing the best of ourselves.'
He could have added that the Lions have not come all the way to one of the most remote cities in the world to twiddle their thumbs idly. By the time they pack their bags and transfer to the opposite coast of this vast continent the hope will be that Farrell's red-shirted marauders have embarked with real intent down rugby's equivalent of Fury Road.