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Have you heard the one about the Englishman, the Irishman and ...?
Actually make that 8 Englishmen, 14 Irishmen, 13 Welshmen and 2 Scots. And no, they’re not going into a pub but are off to South Africa. For these 37 men comprise the British and Irish Lions touring party jetting off to play the first of a 10 match, 3 Test tour starting on 30th May. The party will be captained by Irish lock forward, Paul O’Connell. He can call on the services of Ireland’s Grand Slam captain, Brian O’Driscoll, the only Home Nations captain to be in the chosen 37. Steve Borthwick (England), Mike Blair (Scotland) and, most surprisingly of all, Ryan Jones (Wales) were all deemed surplus to requirements for this tour.
All Lions squads seem to include at least one surprise choice – this one has at least two: 21 year old centre Keith Earls and his fellow Munster man, Alan Quinlan, the almost forgotten back row forward of Irish Rugby.
Lions tours are judged by the number of Test Matches won. History shows that success for the Lions has coincided with a decline in the host nation’s fortunes. The ’71 All Blacks were on the wane when Carwyn James’ Lions became the only successful ones on New Zealand soil. More recently the 1997 party, coached by Ian McGeechan ( the coach of this summer’s party) were helped to success by some woeful selection decisions by Springbok coach Carel du Plessis. As the current South African squad are the World Champions, it is absolutely essential that the tourists win the first Test on June 20th in Durban. Otherwise what we will be hearing about the Englishman, the Irishman etc will certainly sound like a not very funny joke.
Posted: Thursday, September 17th, 2009 @ 00:09 am by BigTips Admin
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