Owen Farrell gives his verdict on The Lions' disappointing loss to Argentina

Irish Daily Mirror

4 hours ago

Owen Farrell believes the British and Irish Lions will learn 'a hell of a lot' from their disappointing defeat to Argentina.
The touring side were playing their first game ever at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on Friday night, and in front of a jam-packed 51,700 crowd, they struggled to get into their groove and were deservedly beaten by the Pumas.
While there were brief flashes in attack, The Lions were sloppy throughout with far too many balls hitting the deck, an area which must be addressed ahead of the start of the tour of Australia next week.
Ex-Lions star Farrell, whose Dad Andy is the coach of the Lions this time around, thinks that despite the worrying result, the Lions still have the chance to get back on track provided they learn from their mistakes.
"I think a lot of the game was played in the right parts of the field," Farrell said in his punditry role on Sky Sports last night.
"Obviously a lot of balls didn't stick and there will be a lot of images that they'll look back on the game from and learn from. I think Argentina did incredibly well to counter punch 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 I think the main thing is that they've played this great game now, this great competitive game that they've played in, and they'll 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 some not so good. I think they'll learn a hell of a lot, a hell of a lot about each other, a hell of a lot as a team and it will put them in good stead for next week."
Head coach Andy Farrell pulled no punches in his criticism after the game, slamming his own performance as well as the team's while celebrating some wonderful rugby from Argentina.
"Yeah, we made it a tough game, didn't we," he said. "Obviously the first and appropriate thing to say is congratulations to Argentina, they thoroughly deserved to win the Test match.
"They capitalised very well on the back of quite a few errors from us. Congratulations to them. I'm sure that's a big moment in Argentinean history.
"You can try and throw it all around and say we had plenty of opportunities and we should have done better to convert that, but the whole story of the game is that we compounded too many errors. In the end, we weren't able to put the pace on the game because of that.
'We're not sugar-coating anything because we need to be honest because if we're not honest how do we gain trust with each other. We have to say it as it is. There are certain things we said we were going to do and we need to own that and review that properly."
He will also review his own performance, which he described as "obviously not good enough" for this game. "I always take full responsibility, that's my role," he said. "It doesn't matter what department or whatever, I'm in charge of the job lot so it obviously wasn't good enough and I need to be better."
"There is a burden involved in playing for the Lions, given the history and tradition, but Farrell says that his players must quickly move on from that. It's something that goes through your mind but we've got to own that," he insisted. "We've got to take responsibility for that.
'We are the British and Irish Lions so we've got to own the right to take that jersey forward. It shouldn't be heavy. We've got brilliant players within our squad and they need to embrace that.'