Tour is only eight matches and has many uncertainties, but if Warren Gatland assembles the right pack – with Maro Itoje a possible captain – the prospects are mouth-wateringExactly a year from now – assuming their tour window is unchanged – the British and Irish Lions will be packing their bags for a trip like no other. Not only will the Lions’ expedition to southern Africa consist of only eight games but they are planning for it in the middle of a global pandemic. Warren Gatland, as head coach, must feel like the pilot of a light aircraft seeking to land on a tiny strip of grass beneath a range of vast, forbidding mountains.Given we barely know what next week...
The British & Irish Lions are the lifeblood of the international game, and efforts must be made to secure the team’s futureThe itinerary announced last week for the Lions tour to South Africa in 2021 was to many a notice of execution. Five weeks, eight matches, just two midweek outings and no games in between the three Tests. And the Gallagher Premiership final will be played one week before the opener in Cape Town against the Stormers.When Warren Gatland returned from the 2017 trip to New Zealand, he said he would not be tempted by another tour, worn out by media ridicule in his home country and anticipating the cut in the length of future itineraries that would make planning...
Eight-match schedule signals end of the midweek dirt-tracker and the Premiership’s refusal to help is hugely depressingEvery four years the British & Irish Lions unveil a tantalising tour schedule and invite thousands of supporters to sign up for the trip of a lifetime, in this instance to South Africa in 2021. A three-Test series on Springbok soil remains one of sport’s truly great adventures but seldom has there been a stronger sense of the golden goose being potentially suffocated by the constraints of self-interest and the global calendar.Amid all the anticipation of a gripping three-Test series against the reigning world champions which could break all previous box office records, it is important to examine the small print. Not only have...
The youngest player to captain a side at a World Cup has called it a day at 29Sam Warburton was reflecting at the start of last year on how long his career may have to run. He had turned 28 two months before and, while he wistfully thought of still playing at the age of 35, he conceded that his body, after 18 major injuries, would probably not hold out that long. As it turned out his final outing would come six months later, helping the British & Irish Lions draw the series in New Zealand with a decisive intervention at the end of the third Test when he gently dissuaded the referee, Romain Poite, from awarding the All Blacks a penalty...
Maro Itoje is not looking his freshest in the Six Nations and Mako Vunipola has also gone quiet after the exacting tour to New ZealandOne of the most interesting sequences in sport is threatening to repeat itself yet again. Every four years, during the Six (or Five) Nations season immediately following a British and Irish Lions tour, it is as if lead weights have been attached to the legs of one nation and restorative oxygen pumped into the dressing-rooms of the rest.Spot the common theme in the following list of champions in post-Lions years since the late 1960s: France, Wales, no winner, Wales, Wales, France, Scotland, Scotland, Wales, France, France, France, France, Ireland. It is necessary to spool back 55...