The three home-based Irish players relatively lacking in top flight rugby of late, Brian O'Driscoll, Ronan O'Gara and Malcolm O'Kelly, look set to start alongside Keith Wood in the Lions tour opener against Western Australia this Friday at the WACA cricket ground in Perth. Far more surprising or interesting than all of that, however, the Lions management appear to be toying with the idea of playing O'Driscoll at full back.
The bones of what certainly seemed to be Friday's opening selection broke away from both the morning and afternoon sessions in Perth yesterday and, as they went through some set-piece moves, on both occasions O'Driscoll lined up at full back. Whether O'Driscoll will play there is another matter. When asked about the possibility, Lions manager Donal Lenihan coyly responded: "well, you can see the quality of centres we have." Nevertheless, the Lions management are clearly considering the idea of O'Driscoll as a strike full back, despite his virtues as an attacking weapon at outside centre and Iain Balshaw's emergence in the Six Nations Championship as a strike full back.
That they are even considering the ploy may or may not suggest Graham Henry has reservations about Balshaw at fullback, and the ultra brave Matt Perry for that matter. One imagines neither of the Bath players are hugely enthused about the experiment, while one wonders if O'Driscoll himself is doing cartwheels about the prospect. Mind you, if it doesn't come to pass this Friday then it assuredly won't do thereafter, given the room for experimentation is limited by this ten-match tour - the Lions' shortest ever.
Judging by yesterday's opening sessions, the likely make-up of the team will be: Darren Morris, Wood and Phil Vickery in the front-row, Danny Grewcock and O'Kelly in the second-row, with a back-row of Richard Hill, Scott Quinnell and Neil Back. Robert Howley looks set to partner O'Gara, with Mike Catt and Mark Taylor being tried out in the midfield and Dan Luger and Ben Cohen on the wings.
In any event, there is clearly a desire to have the Irish-based players playing as quickly as possible, less so Martin Johnson: the Lions captain seemingly being confined to a replacements' role.
As Grahan Henry said on arrival, "some of the Irish lads haven't had a lot of rugby, some of the English guys, such as Martin Johnson after winning the European Cup with Leicester, have had too much. Some are underdone, some are overdone."
Lenihan intimated that as many as possible of the 37 will be given a run-out in the opening two games. "We don't have a huge amount of time to get ourselves together and so it's quite funny to hear people describe the Lions as favourites when we haven't even played together as a team before. Ideally we'd hope to play most of the players in the first two matches of the tour. There will be two or three guys who we will rest in the first two or three games but other than that we'd like to get everybody on the pitch."
Among those to be rested will definitely be Jonny Wilkinson, who is nursing a groin strain, while there is an unfounded rumour that England's Julian White has been lined up as a standby replacement for prop Dai Young, who has been sidelined by a calf strain.
"The challenge for us as a management team is to pull the four countries together. It's not all about rugby and it's a crash course," admitted Lenihan. "There is a fair bit of quality in the squad but it's a question of getting the combinations right on the field and making sure we hit the ground running because in two weeks' time we play the Queensland Reds and in four weeks' time we play the first Test match."
The Lions went through two tough sessions during yesterday's first full day. "Today was great," said Lenihan. "When you consider we're just off the plane and up at 7.00 this morning they were two good sessions. The difficulty is there's a huge amount of work to do because you're starting from scratch. As you can see the coaching expertise is outstanding and it's a question of trying to put it together and work together but we've achieved a lot so far."
Western Australia will be among the weakest of the Lions' opposition on tour, in keeping with three previous meetings which resulted in score-lines of 71-3 in 1930, 60-3 in 1966 and 44-0 a dozen years ago. With Patricio Noriega now not expected to be included, the home side's only guest player is likely to be one-time Wallaby outhalf Duncan McRae, recently of Saracens.
Local interest in the Lions' opener is lukewarm at best, with many of Friday night's projected 15,000 or so attendance expected to be British or Irish ex-patriates. As one local rugby official attending yesterday afternoon's Lions session observed: "Who wants to see their home team get stuffed?"
