No excuses. Not one. Not from Andy Farrell. “We need to be better than that,” the British & Irish Lions’ head coach said after the 28-24 defeat to Argentina that appeared to hurt him like hell, even if it was only a warm-up, and not a Test match.
Argentina had “a fight and hunger we can’t accept,” Farrell said, as he laid out his view of the match as containing too many sloppy passes thrown “blindly” with no fixed target by the Lions, that led to ball on the floor and “scraps that always seemed to go to Argentina”.
If you hadn’t seen and heard much of Farrell in recent years, in his regular job as head coach of Ireland since 2019, and are only just learning about the man’s modus operandi, this was a revelation.
The Lions’ dressing room under Farrell will not be a safe harbour for putting things right later. His hot take is there are just five matches down under before the first Test in Brisbane on 19 July, and none of them are likely to feature as capable an opponent as these Pumas, so there is no time to waste.
The Lions looked unfamiliar and out of sorts (Photo: PA)Be ambitious, yes, but above all make it stick. Tommy Freeman and Tadhg Furlong may be two of the Lions reviewing offloads with concern.
Not as Farrell saw it. And the ultimate discord was that to take your place among the sell-out 51,700 crowd in the Aviva Stadium was to feel a love and support for the team and the concept that ultimately jarred with the way the team itself felt about what they produced.
The Lions’ scrum went well, and apart from making the Wallabies think hard about their selections there, it should make Ellis Genge the loosehead prop one of those who feels he did the team proud. A Genge in his pomp can only be good on a short tour.
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Near the end, though, with Argentina having shown the collective brilliance they have produced in top competitions for years, to create the winning try by Santiago Cordero, the Lions failed markedly to pull a victory out of the fire.
It added to the mixed history of these money-making warm-ups. The 2005 Lions drawing unconvincingly against Argentina in Cardiff, then the 2013 and 2021 vintages handed easy-beat opposition to defeat the Barbarians and Japan in Hong Kong and Edinburgh respectively.
“[Farrell] gives it to us straight, there’s no mucking around or no hiding here, he just tells you how it is,” said Bundee Aki, the Ireland centre who scored a bullocking early try here. Take it from one who knows.
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