There isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison to be made between the British and Irish Lions tour of New Zealand in 2017 and the one in Australia this year, at least in terms of scheduling.
The All Blacks, to the pleasant surprise of many at the time, allowed established Test stars such as Sam Whitelock, Codie Taylor, Owen Franks and Israel Dagg to play for the Crusaders against the Lions just two weeks before the first Test of the series.
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt has signalled this won’t happen this year, and the apparent discrepancy has already been picked up in the northern hemisphere, where fears of the tour being devalued are a quadrennial storyline.
The complexity of this year’s schedule is that the Wallabies are playing against Fiji in Newcastle on July 6, one day after the Waratahs host the Lions in Sydney and four days after the Reds welcome them in Brisbane.
It is the addition of that Fiji fixture two weeks before the first Test on July 19 that will weaken the Reds and the Waratahs for the Lions tour games, not Schmidt’s desire to shield his players from injury risk, and the question really become one of whether the Wallabies are better served by the Fiji Test or playing in the tour games.
It is self-evident that the tour as a whole would benefit from the Wallabies’ top-liners being available for the first three tour games (the Force, the Reds and the Waratahs – the Brumbies game is just 10 days away from the opening Test and a less realistic prospect).
Imagine the frisson in Brisbane if Harry Wilson was permitted to run it off the back fence against the Lions in a Queensland jersey on July 2.
But from a high-performance perspective, the tour games are also surely better preparation for the Test series than the hit-out against Fiji, whose style is completely different to that of the Lions and whose players are largely familiar to the Wallabies thanks to the presence of the Drua in Super Rugby Pacific.
There should be a degree of ambivalence about the value of this Fiji Test, even though it has become coaching orthodoxy that these hit-outs are invaluable (Robbie Deans sought a similar lead-in Test before the 2013 Lions series but was denied, according to sources speaking on the condition of anonymity).
If you look back again to 2017, the All Blacks also had a Test before the Lions series – but what they learnt from a 78-0 romp against Samoa a week out from the first Lions Test is open to debate.
Sonny Bill Williams played against the Lions for the Blues in a tour match before starring in the first Test.Credit: Getty Images
In fact, you could strongly argue that the Crusaders’ All Blacks players took much more out of their loss to the Lions the week before, and a lot of those Crusaders players fronted as the All Blacks beat the Lions 30-15 in the first Test.
Similarly, Sonny Bill Williams, who played a tour game for the Blues against the Lions, played a major hand in the All Blacks’ first Test victory.
In 2021, the Springboks played a final hit-out against Georgia two weeks before the opening Test of the Lions series. They thumped Georgia, and presumably felt this was excellent preparation, but promptly went on to lose the first Test.
As mentioned above, the proximity of the Brumbies’ tour game against the Lions and the first Test exempts their players from this conversation. But top-line Wallabies at the Waratahs, Reds and Force should be bang in the mix for those tour games. It is hard to see the likes of Taniela Tupou, Tom Lynagh and Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii being anything but enriched from the experience.
Yes, you would be cutting into their Wallabies training time a little, but not in a major way and not to the extent that is going to affect the outcome of the series.
Rugby players are rugby players: they want to play in those big games where the accelerated development occurs, notwithstanding that a lot of these blokes are deeply wedded to their state colours regardless of their Wallabies commitments.
