Here is my XV to face Western Force in the opening game on Australian soil next Saturday with an 11am kick off. There is some controversy over the release of players to their club sides in the games leading into the Test Series.
Australia will only play Fiji in the lead up into the series and Joe Schmidt has made it clear he will keep a core of around 25 players within his training group for the Fiji game and the Lions have said this has broken a pre tour agreement that players would be released back to play with their provincial sides or even the Australian/New Zealand Invitational side that will take the Lions on later in the tour.
Joe Schmidt has made it clear he will not release many players as it would affect his build up for that first test. He certainly won’t care about how this affects the Lions as all he will be worried about is how his Australian side shapes up in the 3 Tests.
Australia have assembled a good solid squad and will hope that they can spring a surprise or two come Test time and make sure that many commentators predictions of a white wash in favour of the Lions will not come to pass.
Anyone that has watched Australia over the last year will know that Mr Schmidt has been getting a good tune out of his players and the performances in Super Rugby Pacific of the Australian sides bodes well for the Series.
The Lions lost out to Argentina in Dublin last weekend and that loss has straight away focused the minds for every member of the Lions squad as well as those in the backroom team.
Andy Farrell has come out and said that performance was not good enough and won’t do when Australia come knocking… It’s up to the squad now to put in a big shift on Saturday and get the tour off on the right foot.
Here is the 23 I would select to play on Saturday :
15 Elliott Daly
14 Mack Hansen
13 Huw Jones
12 Sione Tuipulotu
11 James Lowe
10 Finn Russell
9 Tomos Williams
8 Jack Conan
7 Henry Pollock
6 Ben Earl
5 Ollie Chessum
4 Joe Mc Carthy
3 Will Stuart
2 Dan Sheehan
1 Andrew Porter
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16 Luke Cowen Dickie
17 Ellis Genge
18 Tadgh Furlong
19 Josh Van Der Flier
20 James Ryan
21 Scott Cummings
22 Garry Ringrose
23 Bundee Aki