Lions pit Farrell against Sexton for No 10 jersey
It now appears Warren Gatland will not use them in tandem, writes Stuart Barnes.
THERE has been a broad assumption that the Lions test team would include Jonathan Sexton and Owen Farrell. A change of conjunction is required after the announcement of the 41-manstrong squad. With Warren Gatland stressing that Farrell has been named as one of three no 10s, the situation now reads more probably Sexton or Farrell.
The Irishman is one of the world’s finest readers of a game. Farrell has been sensational all season at club level but has limited game time as a test No 10 with Eddie Jones, the England head coach, favouring two playmakers. It won England a test match with two perfect passes in Cardiff. It is an obvious pairing, the Irishman and the Englishman, a Lions equivalent of the omitted George Ford and Farrell.
Yet, by naming Farrell as one of three five-eighths and as many as five specialist centres (Elliot Daly is counted as a wing), the likelihood of it being either Sexton or Farrell at No 10 is magnified; Sexton and Farrell at 10 and 12 diminished.
Gatland likes to give his entire squad a game to state their case. In this instance, Dan Biggar is odds-on to be the only available No 10 for the first game against New Zealand Barbarians. Sexton and Farrell have great chances of playing in their respective domestic finals, which rules them out of the Barbarians game. They will fill the No 10 slots in the first two Super Rugby fixtures, against the Blues and the Crusaders. The fourth tour game against the Highlanders comes three days after the Crusaders clash. There is no possibility of Sexton and Farrell being selected at 10 and 12 if one of them has performed in Christchurch the previous Saturday. The first time they could run on to a field together would be against New Zealand Maori, the nearest thing there is to a dress rehearsal one week before the first test against the All Blacks.
The first test would be only the second time that they played alongside one another, the second test the third. By the time they find themselves on the same wavelength, the series could be over. All this assumes form and fitness. The latter is a sword of Damocles that hangs over the head of the inspirational Irishman, but the Lions management has to deal in assumptions. It has no leeway for anything else.
Until Wednesday’s announcement I assumed that it would be Sexton and Farrell, the Lions’ classiest midfield operators in tandem. Now it looks as though they will be united only if the various centres fail to make their mark on the tour. To give them so little game time together suggests a showdown between the two men for the test shirt.
The only other way in which the dynamic duo are given extra time together is to pair them on the training field. The merit of this is the privacy of the closed training session, the potential element of surprise. Sexton and Farrell could develop a relationship based upon practice. Yet the hours are limited. While the party is large, time for forging a partnership is limited by the requirements of the gruelling match schedule.
Managers believe that miracles can be concocted in training, but in this instance the clock is against such an eventuality. Players can adjust to one another’s strengths and weaknesses but there is no substitute for game time. Training can simulate the match process, but only simulate. The pressure, the noise of a crowd cannot be replicated. It is when one player does not quite hear the defensive call of another that a deep knowledge of the man inside or outside you comes to the rescue.
Training together, for all the benefits of secrecy, leaves the Lions midfield short on the most valuable commodity of all: match time. The Lions want winners and in Farrell and Sexton they have two men with monstrous desire to win.
It will make training interesting, to say the least. If training is as close to a game as one Lions coach claimed to me that it is, on Wednesday, it creates an environment where injuries are almost as likely as developed excellence.
Biggar is also a competitive soul, albeit a man out of form. Throw his brand of physical No 10 play into the mix with the spike of Farrell and the intensity of Sexton and there is one hell of a scrap brewing for the No 10 test jersey. Had the management selected one more fly half and one fewer centre, with Farrell listed primarily as a 12, it would have enabled the Sexton/Farrell axis to play against the Crusaders and Maori before the first test. Two games together is not much but it is double the likely eventuality.
Yet the most probable scenario is that one of these two will miss out on selection. On Tuesday, Farrell was favourite to play 12 to Sexton’s 10. By Thursday, he was fancied by some to be the Lions fly half in the first test. TIMES GETTY IMAGES