Lions tours like this can't happen again: go to Fiji and Samoa first

Times

a day ago

Never mind the result. How desperately this British & Irish Lions tour and this Test needed the bite and spectacle, and the packed crowd at the Suncorp Stadium. There is a temptation to view this as the start of the tour.
Until Saturday in Brisbane rugby as a sport must have felt crushed from all sides, especially in the past week when the sport had been a distant feature in a towering landscape, this tour plodding along in a way Lions tours must never plod. The Lions can never tour here again in the same format.
Even a thumping great Test series is not going to save Australian rugby's return invite — the tour has taken a month and five matches before it came to life, in a rival sporting calendar that is packed, energetic and competitive.
Members of the touring media gathered in numbers at the start of the week in an anxious state of mind — not to worry about the rugby but to follow the stunning action at Lord's, where England and India were locked in a nail-biting denouement.
It was one of those days to showcase the glory of Test cricket. The tension stretched thousands of miles. Watching it in a Brisbane bar was hairy; it was not so much whether Ben Stokes and his men could take the final wicket, but if they could do so before closing time.
Eventually, with one wicket left to take, the proprietor chucked us out. Enterprising viewers then climbed a wall to look through the window at the pictures that were still being beamed inside as the staff cleaned up. You wouldn't have peered over the wall to watch any of the pre-Test tour matches here.
Rugby can sometimes come across as a great sport but it has felt rather puny compared to all that. And then, as this week went on, discussions began in the Australian media and elsewhere — after a newsworthy Wimbledon — about the Open Championship golf. Compelling summer sport is a crowded field.
The Lions themselves are not to blame for the poor state of Australian rugby outside their Test team, but their officials are most certainly to blame for failing to ensure the agreement to field better teams outside the Tests was upheld.
If the Lions play a series in Australia again, fine, but it must be after they have played meaningful fixtures in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. Australia will lose a chunk and they deserve to. Frankly, it is way past time that the Lions abandon their hoary old rhythm of tours.
But the Lions are also far too inward-looking compared with the other big sports at home. They employ one of those rather strange beasts sent up universally by the press pack as an MPO — a media prevention officer. Rugby's aversion to allowing intelligent players to speak intelligently, apart from in hushed snatches, is almost terminal. It is a crying shame and especially since Andy Farrell, the head coach, speaks so well.
One day, rugby will suddenly realise how badly it has harmed itself by its paranoia in keeping the players out of any limelight. And one day it will awake into modern marketing instead of blathering. And what about the bite of true competition? From a distance, the England-India Test had loads of glorious bite, just like the old days in rugby. Compared to that, modern rugby is sanitised. A little medium-grade beastliness never did anyone any harm.
Henry Pollock, the young Northampton Saints flanker, at least had a go last week, stating he wanted these Lions to be seen as the greatest of all time and that they saw a 3-0 Test series as the goal. His grasp of Lions history is negligible — the idea this worthy group will be seen as good as teams that won in New Zealand and South Africa is ludicrous — but at least he stirred the pot.
Rugby cannot offer such a panoply of emotion as we saw at Lord's. It now has a short and vital couple of Tests to show itself and its glories. The odd disagreement and flash of anger would be welcome to light the blue touch paper of a tour that occasionally has looked soggy.
Rugby in Australia is desperate for finance and success. But so too is rugby in the nations that comprise the Lions. They need spectacle and crave attention. They also need their Stokes, their Mohammed Siraj, their Jannik Sinner and their Rory McIlroy.
When the Lions spend a month in Australia without an impact like thunder, it is time to rush to restore their glorious reputation, and change back from soggy to spectacular.