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Lions call for Scotland duo Russell and Dell
By Peter Thompson
Scotland duo Finn Russell and Allan Dell are the latest players to receive British and Irish Lions call-ups for the tour of New Zealand.
Lions coach Warren Gatland drafted in Wales quartet Cory Hill, Kristian Dacey, Gareth Davies and Tomas Francis ahead of the record 32-10 victory over the Maori All Blacks.
It was announced after that impressive victory that fly-half Russell and prop Dell will also link up with the Lions on Sunday, a day after playing for Scotland in their win against Australia in Sydney.
Playmaker Russell scored 11 points - including a try - as Scotland defeated the Wallabies at Allianz Stadium, while Dell came off the bench in the second half of a famous 24-19 victory.
Dell has only won nine caps for Scotland since making his debut against Australia last year.
The pair will fly out to Hamilton for Lions duty just six days before the opening Test against the world champions.
Gatland said: "We have said all along that we need to give ourselves the best chance of winning the Test series and that could potentially involve calling up players.
"Bringing in these players from an identical time zone, who can hit the ground running and step straight in rather than having to adjust following long-haul travel will help us manage players before the first Test, give us quality training numbers to prepare properly as well as offering us options for selection for the Chiefs match [on Tuesday]."
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Latest Comments
Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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