LIONS TOUR PREVIEW: Much at stake for Aussies and global game

There’s a perennial narrative ahead of every British and Irish Lions tour these days driven by the UK and Irish media. It goes to the effect that the concept of the team made up of players from the four Home Unions is under threat and that the future of the Lions is on the line.

It was the pervading narrative when the Lions came to South Africa in 1997, with the series win achieved by a last gasp Jeremy Guscott drop-goal in Durban seen as a stay of execution for Lions tours. In 2009 it was a similar story, which was why Morne Steyn’s long range penalty that won it for the Boks in Pretoria was met with such teeth gnashing.

Seeing that the Lions beat the Wallabies the last time they were there in 2013, drew with the All Blacks in 2017 and were close to the world champion Boks in the Covid hit series in South Africa in 2021, you’d imagine that the commentary would have changed ahead of the current tour to Australia.

But it hasn’t for you will find columns stressing the importance of a Lions win to the preservation of these tours if you scroll through the overseas media.

UNION UNDER THREAT IN AUSTRALIA

Yet there is something that has changed this time around - a recognition that maybe it is the standing of the hosts, and the sport of rugby union in their country, that is under far greater threat.

The ante has been lifted for coach Joe Schmidt and his Wallabies by the declining form of a nation that was twice World Cup champions in the 1990s and which has seen declining numbers at both international fixtures and Super Rugby games.

Let’s start with that declining form. Australia are currently eighth on the World Rugby rankings, which made the decision to play Argentina as their warmup game ahead of the tour decidedly odd. Who warms up for a series against a team that is stronger than the side you are set to face in that series?

It wasn’t that long ago that the Pumas thrashed the Wallabies 67-27 in the Castle Lager Rugby Championship. The South American team has finished ahead of the Pumas in the last two Rugby Championships. The Wallabies also exited the last World Cup at the group stage, with a 40-6 defeat to lowly Wales featuring in their results.

It has now been 10 years since the Wallabies last won the Rugby Championship, and that was in a truncated competition in a World Cup year (2015). The Wallabies were also beaten finalists that year. They haven’t featured as real challengers since then.

There was a resurgence in Wallaby confidence on their most recent November tour, with even the English scribes, eager for this forthcoming series to be seen as competitive, falling over themselves in their haste to praise the Australians for their win over England at Twickenham. They also beat Wales on that trip, thus avenging their World Cup defeat in France.

They did lose to Scotland at Murrayfield, but the arrival of Joseph Sua’alii, a gifted recruit from rugby league, was seen to significantly strengthen the squad and give a boost to the Wallaby chances of winning the series against the Lions.

Schmidt’s calling on the overseas based duo of Will Skelton, such a big part of La Rochelle clinching two Investec Champions Cup titles, and Sau Kerevi further strengthened the Wallaby cause during that tour.

SUPER RUGBY TEAMS FALLING SHORT

However, while there was much hype about a supposed improvement in the Australian form in Super Rugby, the much hyped Brumbies, although they did pip the Hurricanes in their quarterfinal, fell well short against the Chiefs in the semifinal.

All the other Aussie teams exited before the playoff phase of the competition and there was a period, although this was nothing new, where there was a long gap between wins over Kiwi teams.

You have to go back to 2014 to when last an Australian team won Super Rugby (Michael Cheika’s Waratahs). The final that year was played in front of 62 000 in Sydney, but that sort of figure is something Australian rugby union can only dream about now, with the average crowd figures in the union strongholds of Sydney and Brisbane now less than half of what they were a decade or so ago.

The average attendance in Perth, where the Lions tour begins with a game against Western Force, is less than 7 000. The same venue where the Lions opener is to be played saw crowds of 31 000 and 44 000 attend two Aussie Rules games on successive days on a recent weekend.

Aussie Rules draws an average crowd of 39 000 against 21 000 across Australia for Rugby League and 12 000 for Super Rugby.

LIONS ALWAYS ATTRACT MASSIVE INTEREST

There will be far bigger crowds in the venues for this tour because despite the harbingers of doom, Lions tours do attract interest. Not only from locals, but also from the red clad visiting fans who turn every locale into a vibrant and colourful place to be.

The influx of Lions supporters will add to the occasion and the hope from an Aussie viewpoint is that the local teams will achieve the results that will ensure bigger crowds at rugby union games after the Lions have left. That is what Schmidt’s Wallabies are fighting for on this tour, and with a World Cup scheduled for Australia just two years from now most neutrals will want to see them win that fight.

When it comes to threats to the Lions concept, one of the big draws is that it is a proper tour, something that doesn’t happen in the union international game any longer and which people have a clear appetite for. But in South Africa in 2021 Covid prevented the hosts from being able to honour the Tour Agreement by fielding international players in the provincial/franchise games, and there were several embarrassingly one-sided results.

Already Schmidt is under pressure because while there were four Wallabies released to the Force team for the tour opener, he announced an intention to rest key players in the other games the Lions will play against State teams.

How future Lions tours are scheduled and approached could well depend on him honouring the tour agreement, which he is legally bound to do, although with a test against Fiji scheduled for 6 July, he does have wriggle-room.

There may be a bigger chasm between international and franchise/provincial/club rugby than there used to be, but tight games against provincial teams have become part of Lions folklore down the years. The Lions, as a composite team that had never played together before the tour, need tough opposition.

So do the rest of us rugby lovers who don’t want to witness a repeat of what happened in SA four years ago in the buildup to that series, when the SA A side, a Bok team in all but name, was the only decent opposition the Lions faced outside the tests.

INVITATION TEAMS ADD INTRIGUE TO SCHEDULE

There are some intriguing additions to the schedule this time around that could make a good watch outside of the tests, in particular a game against a combined Australia/New Zealand XV scheduled for the week before the series proper kicks off. If that side is made up of the next best players below the Wallabies and All Blacks it could well give the Lions the test that is needed.

The other is a clash with a First Nation Pacifica XV, assumedly drawn from the Pacific Islands, at the Docklands Stadium in Melbourne four days ahead of the second test at Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The competitiveness of the tour games will test the Lions tour concept as it currently stands, the competitiveness of the Wallabies will test rugby union’s future in Australia and, as a consequence, have global rugby needing a Wallabies win. The world game needs a strong Australia. There’s a lot on the line in the six weeks over which the tour will be played.

British and Irish Lions tour of Australia schedule

Western Force (Perth, Saturday 28 June, 12pm)

Reds (Brisbane, Wednesday 2 July, 12pm)

Waratahs (Sydney, Saturday 5 July, 12pm)

Brumbies (Canberra, Wednesday 9 July, 12pm)

Invitational Aus/NZ XV (Adelaide, Saturday 12 July, 12pm)

First test: Australia (Brisbane Lang Park, Saturday 19 July, 12pm)

First Nations and Pacifica XV (Melbourne Docklands, Tuesday 22 July, 12pm)

Second test: Australia (Melbourne Cricket Ground, Saturday 26 July, 12pm)

Third test: Australia (Sydney Football Stadium, Saturday 2 August, 12pm)