Among the pressing questions at Andy Farrell’s first press conference as head coach of the British and Irish Lions it had to be asked exactly how many people it takes to get a rugby tour organised in the 21st century.
Back in 1888, on the very first tour, the Lions had a backroom staff of exactly two. These days, 136 years later, it took three just to welcome each of the attendees and escort them through the doors and up to the 14th floor of the office block hosting the event. The Lions have a staff of about 90 at their peak, but by the time you’ve added in all the sponsors, media, and public relations wranglers, it feels like it runs nearer 900.
A Lions tour has grown into a three-ring circus, an all-action spectacular, with a cast of hundreds and an accompanying film crew too. Really, it’s a wonder that it still runs at all. It’s supposed to take time to build a winning team; Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber spent five years honing the South African side that won two World Cups. The idea that you can do anything similar in the space of only a few weeks on tour once every four years ought to be ridiculous, especially when the players involved spend the other 46 months of the cycle knocking lumps out of each other. It’s a holdover from the amateur age, an anachronism in the professional era.
The fact that it’s still going is testament to two things – the irresistible lure of the idea behind it, and the efforts of a small group of coaches to persuade successive generations of players to buy in. Forget all the rest of it, the Lions live and die by the ability of those coaches to bring everyone together for those few weeks. It’s not a Test series, it’s not a tournament, it’s a tour, and a very different sort of challenge to leading a national team through a World Cup cycle, or a club side through a league campaign. The Lions need a head coach who gets that, who understands what it’s all about in his marrow.
Which is why, even though there are months of speculation and debate ahead about who ought to be in the Lions team to tour Australia, the single most important call has already been made. Farrell still has plenty to prove as a coach. For all his success in charge of Ireland, his record across three World Cups (as both assistant and head coach) is modest. England went out in the group stages in 2015, Ireland in the quarter-finals in 2019 and 2023. But he is the right man to take this job on.
For the last three tours it was entrusted to Warren Gatland. He learned all he knew about the Lions from Ian McGeechan, who led him on tour to South Africa in 2009, and Gatland, in turn, passed that knowledge on to Farrell, who he picked as one of his assistants in both 2013 and 2017. Farrell spoke at length about the impact the 2013 tour in particular made on him. He was still wet behind the ears as a coach when Gatland asked him to take on the role. Farrell said it “lit a fire” in him that’s been burning ever since.
He knew, then and there, that he wanted to do it again and again in the future. “I love everything about the format. I love the buildup of the games, I love how tough that is for the touring party and all the different dynamics that go with that,” Farrell said. “The three-match Test part is special. Because there should be a winner really.” In 2013 they came back from one-all to win the series. “Getting yourself back up that week to put in a performance like we did in the third Test is a memory that will stay with you for ever,” Farrell added. “I’m hoping for another one.”
Farrell was almost a little embarrassed to be reminded of his famous speech before the third Test of that tour, when he told the players they were going to take Australia to the “hurt arena”. “I’ve probably grown up a little bit since then,” he said. “I’m a little less dramatic.”
He may not be quite as deft at playing the press as Gatland; he isn’t as quick with his jokes, or as cutting with his comments, may not manipulate the referees, or bait the opposition, in the same way Gatland can.
But there’s no doubt that he knows, and understands, how to connect with his players, and how to make them want to play for him, and for each other. And on a Lions tour, that’s the whole ballgame.
