British and Irish Lions backrow update as squad travel Down Under

Irish Daily Mirror

6 hours ago

Andy Farrell's Lions have lost their first tour match, defeat to Argentina having taken away the first aim as written on the whiteboard all those months ago.The 2025 Lions will not go down in the history books as an undefeated group, they will never be able to match themselves with the 1974 Lions, the standard bearers.Captained by Ireland Willie John McBride they played 22 games, four of which were Tests against South Africa, three of which they won and the last of which they drew.As the current players are about to find out, Andy Farrell is a box-ticker and scratching off 'mission one' will be an irritant for him - one for which blame may well be apportioned.Farrell touched on "I take responsibility" afterwards and he is not 100 percent wrong, the coaching staff got the back-row mix horrendously wrong, not so much in selection with what they had available, but in not realising they were short.Once Caelan Doris pulled out and it was clear that Josh van der Flier and Jack Conan were not going to be able to be turnaround Saturday-Friday, Farrell needed to jump from the squad straight-jacket and be flexible.Argentina have massive back-row units, no8 Joaquin Oviedo, flankers Juan Martin Gonzalez, Pablo Matera and second-rows Pedro Rubiolo, Franco Molina are physical, straight-line, in your face, beasts.Without Doris and with Conan and JVDF unavailable, he was left with Ben Earl, Jack Morgan, Henry Pollock and Tom Curry in Dublin for the back-row. There is no big, daunting, physical powerhouse there.
The coach could have reached and called in some heavies, Wales's Toby Faletau maybe for no8, maybe Rory Darge or James Ritchie who are hardman scrappers, maybe even Ryan Baird for the bench. Was Peter O'Mahony fit?
We know now, taking from Friday, that Jack Willis should have been in the squad, albeit he would have been unavailable - he plays for Toulouse who are still battling away in the Top 14.Moreover by selecting a light back-row and putting Tadhg Beirne at no5, where he is quite light for a second-row, it was conceding fighting weight. If Beirne had been put at No6, Scott Cummings could have played.But then the squad was selected to play on fast tracks against an Australia side who's key feature is running, running and running again.Moreover while Farrell can't have expected to watch Duhan van der Merwe implode defensively across the backline and he would have known Fin Smith was a weak defenderBut he won't have been pleased the lightweight-in-the-context-of-this-game Curry missed three of his 12 tackles, similarly challenged Beirne three from nine, Ben Earl two from six while Jac Morgan's contribution from openside was ephemeral, six tackles and four carries.Tour captain Itoje touched on this lack of physicality, the idea the Lions had wild in the face of Argentine beef in the hoof: "At times we were playing tippy-tappy and that's not what we want to be. We want to be an aggressive team. We would have liked to have been kicking off right from the off."It wasn't quite that. We didn't consistently apply pressure, we were nowhere near as accurate or as consistent as we wanted to be. We only showed glimmers of what we can do, we let them off and they caught us slipping at times."Argentina showed us where we are lacking but we are building, we will live, learn and I am happy we had a hard-fought game. This is only match one."Felipe Contepomi, soft-spoken and one helluva coach, has done it again.His Pumas have beaten six of the seven top teams in the world in the space of a year, the British and Irish Lions now added to South Africa, New Zealand, England, France and Australia - Ireland, to whom the Pumas lost by three points in November, are the odd ones out. "It's kind of a one-off," he said, deflecting the credit. "It's an invitation game and the last time, it was 20 years ago, and we were just there and we couldn't beat them."Coming here 20 years later I think it's incredible. We don't know if we'll ever again be invited or not to play and definitely for everyone who's been involved this week it will be memorable."It is special. I know how special it is for an Irish, a Scottish, a Welsh or an English player to be a Lion, and for us to play against the best of the best in these islands, it's nearly a dream."We took a bit of an opportunity because I know they'll be much better in one month's time when they play Australia. They'll be an awesome team, because they have so much quality in there."So, no surprise, Contepomi was a gent. Owen Farrell was apportioning the blame evenly.'A lot of the game was played in the right parts of the field. Obviously, a lot of ball didn't stick. There will be a lot of images they [the Lions] will look back at the game on and learn from.'Argentina did unbelievably well to counterpunch when they got the opportunity, whether it be a ball on the floor or a turnover – they seemed to turn things into points pretty quickly."I'm sure the Lions boys will be frustrated, but the main thing is they played this great game now, this great competitive game that they played in."They will have some images to go off to see what is the standard and what's not, why some of those balls went down, why some of those decisions were good and why some were not so good."
These are lessons this collective will have to take on the chin.'They will learn a hell of a lot about each other, they will learn a hell of a lot as a team and it will put them in good stead for next week. There is an ability to use that. The frustration that comes with losing a game makes you look at yourself that bit more."With the way that has gone and the frustration that you see from a lot of the players, they will come off the plane on the other side, and they will be raring to get stuck into what they can do to make it better.'There is obviously a lot of players come in over this last week in the Leinster lads, the Bath lads but it's just about taking a step forward."Meanwhile Schmidt added: "I coached Bundee for several years and know him really well and respect him massively as a player. He's a great contributor to the team environment."I've only had glancing conversations with Sione but again, by all accounts a champion bloke. You don't get to be captain of a national team without being a great bloke and really professional in those high-performance environments."Meanwhile half the world away, Joe Schmidt was having some fun at the Lions expense talking of their terrific 'Southern Hemisphere' centre partnership.As someone ever ready to pick non-Irish born players for Ireland and get them passports, he noted of the current Lions squad:"I coached Bundee for several years and know him really well and respect him massively as a player. He's a great contributor to the team environment."I've only had glancing conversations with Sione but again, by all accounts a champion bloke. You don't get to be captain of a national team without being a great bloke and really professional in those high-performance environments."Somewhat tactfully, he declined to mention Duhan van Merwe and Finlay Bealham as well as subs Pierre Schoeman, Mack Hansen being southern hemisphere products too!