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It may be too early to start asking existential questions about the British & Irish Lions but, sitting in Melbourne’s Southbank, slap bang in the middle of Aussie rules territory, where union makes barely a ripple, you begin to wonder. The sea of red will roll in at the weekend but, for now, Melbourne is pretty much oblivious. “Some kind of carnival on I think,” was one taxi driver’s assessment.
None of this is to criticise Australia. It is a wonderful country, sports mad and as the loosehead prop James Slipper says of the locals: “They’re still Australian, so they’ll be there. I know they’ll be there. It’s one thing about this country, regardless of the sport, they’ll get behind the national colours.”
If you assess the key criteria of a Lions tour, however, it is hard to argue that they are all being met at the moment. The beauty of Lions tours is the notion of four disparate unions coming together, travelling to take on southern hemisphere powerhouses against the odds. With the Lions clear favourites for the first Test, this tour has already deviated from that premise and so there is an understandable argument to seek out other powerhouses. That, in turn, brings us to France’s interest in joining the party.
The number one reason to entertain a Lions tour of France is, to be frank, the bottom line. The 2023 World Cup proved costly for France – an expected net loss of €13m (£11.3m), according to a damning report over mismanagement released in April by the French court of audit – but for World Rugby it generated record-breaking revenues of €500m (£433m). Evidently the ground is fertile.
Second is the prospect of a competitive series. The current one may well turn out to be a one-sided affair and the impetus for change will be greater. To paraphrase George Berkeley, if a Lion mauls a Wallaby in the forest, does it make a sound?
There is a stark contrast with the idea of warm-up matches against, say, Toulouse, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Racing 92, one of Bayonne, Biarritz and Perpignan in the Basque region, and maybe even Vannes, whose club song is to the same tune as the Welsh national anthem. It is a mouthwatering prospect, the potential for competitive matches from the word go, as was the case in New Zealand eight years ago.
The French clubs would be without some of their overseas internationals should they be selected for their countries’ summer tours but it is hard to envisage blowouts. France have the depth to ensure they do not need to worry about resting all of their stars. They may have lost their series 3-0 in New Zealand but their C team gave the All Blacks an almighty scare in the opener in Dunedin. “Fabien Galthié looks for 42 key players and works with them together,” Abdel Benazzi, the French federation vice-president, told the Guardian. “If [Antoine] Dupont is not fit, we have another player and we use the players as we’ve seen in New Zealand.”
None of that is to say Australia should be stripped of future Lions tours, rather that their existing formats could do with updating. That Australia are not as competitive as hoped is down to the relative strength of the four home nations and the Wallabies’ long-term decline. But to take a tour away from them would be financially ruinous – Rugby Australia made a $37m (£17.9m) loss last year but the Lions are expected to wipe the debt.
It feels as if this has been a Test series against Australia rather than a tour, however. The warm-up matches and the constant travel provide headaches but such is the professionalism in dealing with logistics among the backroom staff that they no longer pose the challenges they once did. Lions tours are said to be a glorious anachronism but Tuesday’s match against the First Nations & Pasifika XV offers evidence to the contrary. It should be that the Lions squad must negotiate that fixture with players who at least have half a chance of making the Test side. Instead, a handful of players have been seconded for this fixture only – such is their temporary status that they may even head home before the tour has ended.
Australia are not entirely innocent here either. Just as his former right-hand man Andy Farrell has done, Joe Schmidt has prioritised the series at the expense of the wider tour, letting an opportunity to spread the union gospel around the country pass by in refusing to release his senior players to play in the warm-up matches. You could argue they would not have made enough of a difference to stop the Lions juggernaut from arriving in Brisbane for the first Test with five wins from five in Australia, but there is something special about watching rivalries blossom in the warm-up matches before they are renewed in the Test arena.
While a tour of France may be a shot in the eye for nostalgia, for romance, we are already experiencing plenty. Remaining in Europe opens the door to so many supporters priced out of the southern hemisphere trips. “In rugby we need something new,” adds Benazzi. “Thinking about what the youngsters want, what a new public want. We have our legacy with the Six Nations and the World Cup but we have to be thinking about what we can do within our hands. The Lions and France have the same destiny, we cannot live apart, we have to build something new.”
The cons of a tour of France include the fact that player release may be a problem given how late the Top 14 season runs, but Benazzi anticipates buy-in from the clubs and the French players and public alike. The Top 14 has shown itself to be more malleable than it often appears by agreeing to bring forward the end of the domestic season in 2028 when the Club World Cup launches.
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The second and perhaps more significant problem is that a tour of France would leave the Lions facing accusations of parochialism. It is effectively five of the Six Nations countries competing in a different guise and it does little to broaden rugby’s horizons beyond the elite, even if a Test match in Barcelona would be an enticing prospect.
The alternatives? A series against Argentina ticks the box of taking the Lions to the southern hemisphere, a new territory that could put on a stunning show. But, on the evidence of England’s summer tour, the Pumas are too capricious to guarantee a heavyweight contest. The US remains the holy grail for executives but the Eagles are far too lightweight to warrant anything beyond a warm-up fixture. Chile could be early opposition too but a South American tour would not leave the Lions competing against the odds.
How about the Pacific Islands? Certainly it seems a mistake that the Lions have not played Fiji, Tonga or Samoa at any point in this series and that should be remedied on future tours of Australia or New Zealand. Fiji offered to step in to face the Lions when the Melbourne Rebels went bust but it was decided that there needed to be “an Australian opportunity”.
That is not to disparage the First Nations and Pasifika XV, more to question why the Lions and Rugby Australia did not seek to include the Pacific Islands in the first place. “I think realistically everyone knows it’s a do-or-die,” said Slipper. He was referring to the Wallabies’ series hopes but if the Lions complete the whitewash they are so ruthlessly targeting, the clamour for change will grow ever louder.
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