For Andy Farrell, the pressure cooker of the Lions starts here.
The last six months have been the fun part: planning, travelling to games, piecing together the tour player by player, coach by coach. Getting the itinerary right. Ensuring you’ve the right people in place and gradually bringing them on board. Getting a squad together, cutting them down to the touring party… the raw theory of it. It’s fun.
By the time the Lions squad started to assemble last week from various clubs around Europe, albeit with a good few still to travel due to club commitments, there was still a good bit of fun to be had. Assigning roommates, getting committees together, and getting the initial plans off the ground; it’s all part of the craic of the Lions at this point, but you’re still just shadow boxing.
More pressure starts to creep in. The spectre of injury hangs over every game, shit, every session at this point. The Lions have already lost Zander Fagerson, with doubts over Gibson Park and Keenan, among others. Soon they will lose more; previous Lions tours have shown us that it is an inevitability. Farrell was bullish about this during the week, but it felt like a front. He has guys he can afford to lose, and players he knows he can’t win this series without.
There are six games to play before the first test against Australia in Suncorp, Brisbane. Every single one of those games will be attritional; no handy run outs, and at the end, you have one of the best analysts and coaches in the game, Joe Schmidt, lying in wait for Andy Farrell’s Lions.
He knows how Farrell thinks, he knows what Farrell wants, and he’ll have six games to watch Andy Farrell try to replicate his Irish system with a few new components and, in doing so, he’ll get to see Farrell’s system laid out piece by piece. He’d do this anyway – because that’s what Joe Schmidt does – but the wiliest analyst working in the test game today will have a head start because, fundamentally, he knows how Andy Farrell thinks.
That doesn’t mean anyone should look past Argentina here, either. As with everything, they have their own aims and pathway this summer, but Andy Farrell has to look through this game too. It’s not just about putting on a show in front of an expectant crowd who’ve spent hundreds of euro just to get in through the turnstile, it’s about laying down a foundation for the games to come because one fact remains above all; the Lions have won just one series in the last 27 years since the 1997 win over the Springboks. That was in 2013 against the Wallabies, but it’s not enough. Sure, the drawn series against the All Blacks in 2017 was a win of sorts in that it wasn’t a loss, but that’s a thin enough gruel for a lion to survive on. The concept of this tour needs a series win here because it’s hard to see where the next one comes from without it.
That’s why the British & Irish Lions hired Andy Farrell. That’s why they gave him carte blanche to basically transplant his Ireland team from the last three years onto the Lions, despite all of the risks of a 2005 style implosion that involves.
They, this concept, need a win.
British & Irish Lions: 15. Marcus Smith; 14. Tommy Freeman, 13. Sione Tuipulotu, 12. Bundee Aki, 11. Duhan van der Merwe; 10. Fin Smith, 9. Alex Mitchell; 1. Ellis Genge, 2. Luke Cowan-Dickie, 3. Finlay Bealham, 4. Maro Itoje, 5. Tadhg Beirne, 6. Tom Curry, 7. Jac Morgan, 8. Ben Earl.
Replacements: 16. Ronan Kelleher, 17. Pierre Schoeman, 18. Tadhg Furlong, 19. Scott Cummings, 20. Henry Pollock, 21. Tomos Williams, 22. Elliot Daly, 23. Mack Hansen.
Argentina: 15. Santiago Carreras; 14. Rodrigo Isgro, 13. Lucio Cinti, 12. Justo Piccardo, 11. Ignacio Mendy; 10. Tomas Albornoz, 9. Gonzalo Garcia; 1. Mayco Vivas, 2. Julian Montoya (c), 3. Joel Sclavi, 4. Franco Molina, 5. Pedro Rubiolo, 6. Pablo Matera, 7. Juan Martin Gonzalez, 8. Joaquin Oviedo
Replacements: 16. Bautista Bernasconi, 17. Boris Wenger, 18. Francisco Coria Marchetti, 19. Santiago Grondona, 20. Joaquin Moro, 21. Simon Benitez Cruz, 22. Matias Moroni, 23. Santiago Cordero
The first thing Andy Farrell spoke about this week was “cohesion”.
It’ll be what everyone is talking about over the next few weeks, but Irish fans know all about it. I’m surprised it took Farrell longer than two weeks to mention it as strongly as he did, to be honest, because it’s the secret sauce to Andy Farrell’s success with Ireland in the last few years.
I’ve been over this before, but when other test sides are onboarding and getting players from multiple club environments onto the same page, Andy Farrell’s Ireland are training an incredibly involved and complex attacking system that is impossible for others to do without the same circumstances.
Farrell’s Ireland is, essentially, Leinster with what he sees as their weaknesses buffed out. At that system’s peak efficiency – twelve months before and during the 2023 World Cup – Ireland and Leinster played broadly the same style, with almost identical playing concepts, game states and even mostly the same lineout.
This allowed Farrell’s Ireland to train better, play with more complexity, and play some of the best, most attractive rugby in the test arena while they were at it. It was incredibly successful, and that success pushed Farrell to a point where he was the only possible hire that made sense for this tour. But the expectation is that what worked for Ireland will also work for the Lions, although, ideally, without stacking the Lions full of a record number of players from one country to do so.
Without the bulk of the Leinster squad that will make up the bulk of this Lions squad, Farrell has gone for an England-heavy version of the Lions to get as much cohesion as he can, where he can. There are nine English players in the starting XV in core areas. Halfback, in particular, will be an area where Farrell hopes pre-existing combinations can drive the performance.
As a result, I would expect the Lions to play heavy counter-transition, verging on an off-ball game against Argentina, as that’s the easiest template to put in place in the time they’ve had, with the players they’ve had. It’s also a game you can layer most of what Ireland have been doing in the last 18 months post World Cup on top of. As far as Farrell and his coaching staff are concerned, this should be a solid building block for what’s to come.
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Farrell’s selection of a triple-small forward back row is particularly interesting, though, as it would seem to be a departure from the Ireland template I expect the Lions to use on this tour.
Is it a one-off to maximise the tackle and defensive breakdown volume you’d expect in an easily drilled off-ball game? That’s quite possible. The Lions can’t have too much system in place as it stands and, with three kickers in the backfield and a midfield that offers the same kind of small forward punch defensively, the base game of Earl, Curry and Morgan seems like it would suit here. All three players are top-class jackals. All three are capable of carrying in every channel – tight, close, middle and edge.
None of the three are regular lineout jumpers, but that’s OK too – it means that the Lions will have focused on using two primary jumpers this week instead of three. Again – simplicity, a solid base, and it can be layered on for next Saturday’s game against the Western Force.
As the weeks pass, the Lions will add more and more pieces to the puzzle, but off-ball rugby is their easiest path to getting where they want to be against Argentina and the Western Force in the next two weeks. Kick, chase, contest, tackle, scrum.
It also gives them a system to fall back on if core members of that Irish side pick up injuries after a long season, where multiple expected Lions starters are pushing well into the 25+ game mark before a tackle bag is even hit on this tour. Guys like Porter (27 games), Beirne (26 games), Van Der Flier (24 games) and Gibson Park (23 games) are going to have to be managed on this tour to prevent breaking down against teams who, let’s just get this out of the way, are going to be trying to soften them up for the Wallabies.
A simpler game plan allows you to focus on the fight, which I think the Lions will have to do on this tour on a week-to-week basis. This is their last game on friendly ground, so they might as well enjoy it.
