Crazy schedule and disrupted preparations... why the Lions job could be a poisoned chalice

STUART Pearce has been drafted in to help Simon Amor’s Olympics sevens squad unite under the Team GB banner in Rio this summer.

Former England football full-back Pearce has addressed Team GB’s wider Olympics training squad as head coach Amor races against time to draw the best sevens stars together from England, Scotland and Wales.

Pearce talked of common passion, but has also advised sevens boss Amor on selection dilemmas, given his own stewardship of Team GB’s 2012 football side.

“I’ve had a lot of conversations with Stuart Pearce about how he managed to bring that GB team together for London 2012, the challenges he faced in a short space of time, to bring the home nations together,” said Amor.

“Stuart told me to smash the Team GB message with the players. He obviously had the difficult choice of not picking David Beckham, he chose Ryan Giggs instead.

“The biggest thing he said was ‘hammer home that Team GB message, how big it is.’ Everyone you speak to says it doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past, there’s nothing that compares to this, the Olympics, the size, the scale, the feeling.

“And the other thing he said was to try to enjoy the journey, because he said it goes by just like that, in a second. We’ve tried to enforce that with the guys and they’ve worked so hard so far.”

Amor is just as busy weighing final Rio selection as building excitement and ambition among his squad.

Amor has insisted the top-performing players will be selected to travel to Brazil, irrespective of their nationality.

Amor will finalise his 12-strong squad selection on July 19, before the GB men’s outfit face New Zealand, Kenya and Japan in group-stage action, starting on August 9.

“There has been no quota set,” said Amor of the impending Team GB selection. “As soon as I got the job I committed 100 per cent to sending the very best team we could possibly to the Olympics.

“That meant making some tough calls for resting and recovering the England guys, knowing we needed a squad of at least 24 going in.

“But now it’s about that blend and that balance, and that’s what we’re trying to do in training, seeing who works well together.

“So it may not be the best individual players, it may be who works best with that particular player.

“So nothing to do with quotas, we’ll send what we think is the best squad.” WHEN the victorious 2013 Lions held their going-home press conference at the Royal Automobile Club just up from Sydney Harbour, one question from the assembled press corps cut through the atmosphere of celebration like a Dan Lydiate chop-tackle.

How long will it be, wondered one esteemed colleague, before the most cherished of rugby institutions is given a chance to prepare properly for the rigours of a modern tour to the southern hemisphere with a window of preparation in the calendar worth its salt?

It didn’t seem the time to focus on a negative, and the response was typically wishy-washy.

The gist of it was that contracts had been signed and TV deals already put in place. The Lions would have to go with what they had been given in four years’ time.

On that sunny Australian morning, after the delirium of a third and decisive Test win the night before, four years seemd like an eternity.

But as we go though the 75% mark of that period, the longstanding theory of the 2017 expedition to face the All Blacks being made almost impossible by the itinerary is starting to crystalise.

It scarcely came as a surprise when it was confirmed on Thursday lunchtime that the Aviva Premiership final will take place on May 27 next year, just seven days before the first Lions tour game against a Provincial Union XV.

T’was ever thus. The basket-case global rugby programme has always had all the manoeuvrability of a grounded oil tanker.

Yet the news would still have prompted a wry smile of resignation from all those with Lions business on their minds, Warren Gatland especially.

If he is chosen to be the man in charge he now knows the party will have to prepare without many of the best English players, plus any number of Aviva-based Celts. Leigh Halfpenny could also be involved in the French play-offs which run ludicrously well into June.

It is disruption that is bound to undermine Lions prospects which would be distant enough in the most accommodating of circumstances.

The Lions were not taken by surprise by the date of the Aviva final and the plan remains for the them to fly out on Monday May 29, but those who play the weekend before will not be sent into action in the first encounter.

Despite being resigned to the situation it’s a million miles from ideal for the Lions and it should be a matter of profound shame for the sport of rugby union that, yet again, it has come to this.

Gatland has made no secret of his interest in leading the next Lions attempt at conquest of his homeland. But he has also emphasised just how daunting a task it will be.

Following the first warm-up fixture, there are games against all five New Zealand Super Rugby sides, three Tests against the All Blacks and a clash with a Maori XV... all in the space of four and a half weeks.

Daunting? Make that nigh on impossible.

As Gatland stews on Wales’ demise at the hands of the world champions last month – not to mention a weakened Chiefs outfit that managed to put 40 points on the tourists – what price he is now viewing the next Lions assignment as a bridge too far?

For all that Wales competed well for periods of the first two Tests, Gatland does not return here with his reputation enhanced. In fact he returns to more public chagrin than he has faced at any time in his lengthy tenure.

Does he really, therefore, want to be sent into battle with the proverbial pea-shooter in 12 months time as Lions boss? After what he achieved in 2013, does he really want a lost Lions series on his CV?

Let’s get real about this; logic dictates that is what awaits whoever heads up this ill-conceived hiding to nothing.

It was possible for the Lions to get over the line in 2013 because they faced the Wallabies not the All Blacks and their midweek games were against weaker Super Rugby sides, even if they were downed by the Brumbies in Canberra.

The environment will be manifestly harsher in New Zealand.

Wales found out a few weeks ago how formidable a Kiwi Super Rugby team can be even when shorn of it’s Test stars.

They also discovered that they were ultimately no match for an All Blacks outfit that hadn’t played for seven months and was embarking on a new era without a clutch of legendary names who were central to back-to-back World Cup triumphs.

If fierce motivation allowed the Chiefs to shock Wales then rest assured in a year’s time the Waikato-based boys, together with the Blues, Crusaders, Highlanders and