The British and Irish Lions coaching group has been announced with John Fogarty, Simon Easterby, Richard Wigglesworth, John Dalziel and Andrew Goodman chosen as the men to assist Andy Farrell on the 2025 tour of Australia.
Each of these men has been involved nationally at different sides and brings a different skill set to the table for the upcoming tour. Andy Farrell has put in some leg work over recent months to see coaches as well as players and from a coaching perspective it would be important to sound people out and see who may be available and happy to travel.
Ireland will contribute three coaches with Goodman, Easterby and Fogarty travelling to Australia. England will see backs coach Richard Wigglesworth travel and Scotland forwards coach John Dalziel will also travel.
Ireland will be impacted but one has to think that this has been planned for and if it hasn’t then the IRFU hasn’t been very good at forward planning. The talk is that Paul O Connell will now lead the Irish coaching team travelling to Portugal and Georgia for the games over the summer.
For the coaches and support staff selected to go it is a trip of a life time and will allow the chance to swap ideas and see how other coaches operate on a daily basis. The work will now step up to narrow down the likely tourists from a long list to almost a squad set in stone that will itself be announced on May 8th.
The last time the Lions won a series was the 2013 test series in Australia and the smart money will be on a repeat performance in 2025. Joe Schmidt is doing some forward planning himself and he will steer Australia through the Rugby Championship as well as the Lions series and then step aside to allow the new man come in to lead Australia to the 2027 Rugby World Cup.
The job of work starts now and you’ll see more of the recently assembled coaching team out and about most likely beginning during the round of 16 games in both the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup as well as various big clashes in the URC and Premiership.