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Lions bring forward XV announcement by 24 hours as Times leaks line-up
By Liam Heagney
Lions boss Warren Gatland has followed the lead of the Springboks by bringing forward the announcement of his first Test team by 24 hours. South Africa were initially due to announce their team on Wednesday for next Saturday's Test series opener in Cape Town, but Jacques Nienaber brought this marking forward by 24 hours to Tuesday.
Now Gatland, who was originally billed to announce his team this Thursday, has similarly brought forward his announcement by 24 hours and the big public reveal will now take place at 10am (BST) on Wednesday.
This means the Lions squad will only have to sit on the news of who is in their Test team for just one night and not two after Gatland privately told his squad what his XV is for Saturday before they went training for their second session on Tuesday afternoon at Hermanus High School in Cape Town.
“We are due to find out in a meeting this afternoon before we go out for the afternoon session,” said winger Anthony Watson at a Lions media briefing shortly after noon (BST) on Tuesday. “We should find out pretty imminently. This morning’s session was good. The backs, we went through our plays and some of our edge attack, edge defence, kicking game, that type of stuff but everyone was revved up.
“There was a different kind of aura around the place when it is Test week when everyone is trying to put their best foot forward at every moment in training. It was very good. It was competitive and I am sure this afternoon will be the same if not more ramped up.”
Springboks boss Nienaber, who announced a starting line-up containing eleven of the players that started the November 2019 final versus England, insisted his early team announcement wasn't part of the mind games that have been going on between Lions boss Gatland and Rassie Erasmus, the South African director of rugby.
“Irrespective of whether we announced it on a Wednesday or a Tuesday, they knew the team already. It was probably easier to get it out of the way. There is no strategic thinking,” he said.
Speculation about the likely Lions XV ignited on Tuesday evening with the London-based Times newspaper claiming the starting team announced by Gatland to his squad before afternoon training consisted of six English players with three each coming from Ireland, Scotland and Wales - including skipper Alun Wyn Jones.
LIONS TEAM (as speculated by the London Times)
15. Stuart Hogg; 14. Anthony Watson, 13, Elliot Daly, 12. Robbie Henshaw, 11. Duhan van der Merwe; 10. Dan Biggar, 9. Ali Price; 1. Wyn Jones, 2. Luke Cowan-Dickie, 3. Tadhg Furlong, 4. Maro Itoje, 5. Alun Wyn Jones (capt), 6. Courtney Lawes, 7. Tom Curry, 8. Jack Conan. Reps: 16. Ken Owens, 17. Rory Sutherland, 18. Kyle Sinckler, 19. Tadhg Beirne, 20. Hamish Watson, 21. Iain Henderson, 22. Conor Murray, 23. Owen Farrell.
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Finau is definitely operating on razor thin margins. He hasn’t done anything wrong… yet. But a player going into contact 6 inches lower than he is expecting, without him even knowing, will end in disaster. You can imagine a situation where the pass dies on Edmed and he has to bend down a little lower to catch it at the last second. Finau’s hit would have been catastrophic. The margins are just too fine. He needs to study how PSDT, at 6’7”, manages to drop his tackle height and exert just as much force with close zero danger of taking someone’s head off. Given how poorly NZ has adapted to lower their tackle height, and that this issue which has plagued the ABs for years and played a big part in them not winning the World Cup, I thought NZR and all SR coaches would be prioritising sorting this issue out. If I was Razor I would be on the phone to Clayton MacMillan and Samipeni Finau saying exactly that. Finau is a monster and shaping up to be the closest thing to Kaino since Kaino, but I wouldn’t risk selecting him for the ABs at the moment.
Go to commentsThe surprising stat I saw in the Blues game when showing Sotutu equaling the Blues forwards record was that Akira has not scored a try since 2019. Now my memory is pretty bad when it comes to those sorts of the things, I can remember his AB try though, but anyway I can’t see I can remember his last blues touchdown or any in recent years. Surely that still has to be a bogus stat. Maybe excludes SRA games?
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