This is about the game time and the cash. In the first place, Andy Farrell has 38 players he needs to use in the first three games of the British and Irish Lions tour and the first instalment will be before a less than capacity crowd at the Aviva Stadium against Argentina on Friday night. In the second place, it is about filling the coffers of the Lions machine and the four home unions who are part of the caravan.
Gate receipts from this game will yield in the region of €3m (£2.55m) after costs, which goes towards the Lions’ bottom line, with a dividend to come to the unions involved. Unlike the last time the tourists opened an adventure to Australia – with the crazy cash-grabber in sweltering Hong Kong in 2013 – this has a less manufactured look to it. Certainly, it suits the Argentinians and the Irish.
The away team will pick up about €1m (£850,000) for their efforts – double their take-home from the pre-New Zealand tour game against the Lions in Cardiff in 2005 – and the Irish Rugby Football Union will collect the wedge for the hire of the dancehall, plus the honour of a first Lions game on its soil: a fitting way to round off a season celebrating its 150th anniversary.
The Pumas would love to set the Lions off to a bad start. Their chances are not great given this match is outside the international window and Felipe Contepomi, their coach, is relying heavily on their Super Rugby Americas contingent for what is their opening game of the season. Meanwhile, the noises coming from the Lions camp are all very positive. England’s Tommy Freeman, for example, sounds as if he is straining at the leash to get started. So what can we expect?
“Without giving away too much, hopefully a lot of tries,” he says. “Instinctive playing; we’re not going to be there to set stuff up and go through phases for the sake of going through phases. We want to score off the back of anything we can. The guys we’ve got in the backline, there are threats people have to offer and the ballplayers can put us in those spaces. It’s going to be a lot of fun and dangerous, I think.
“It’s the best of the best, isn’t it? You’re all there for a reason. It’s how quick everyone is learning the plays, learning the calls. It’s how quick everyone is learning that and getting on board with it.
“I’ve played around Fin [Smith], Mitch [Alex Mitchell] and the [Northampton] Saints lads, but with the others, we’ve got to know each other and the way they move the ball and do things. You pick up cues here and there so it’s all about adapting and how quick we’ve learned off each other in the past few weeks.”
According to the attack coach, Richard Wigglesworth, his own working relationship with Johnny Sexton is developing in the same vein of learning. For the group he is confident about the end result. “I think the Lions way will find itself to ultimately go and try and win a Test series,” he says. “You can have: ‘Oh, this is what we want it to look like,’ but if it’s all on the line in the third Test and it’s raining, it’s going to look different.
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“The Lions way is us being the best prepared we can, whatever the circumstances, whatever the context of that game. Because we want to come out with a successful tour, both on and off the field.”
The target then is for everyone to be richer from the experience.
