Lions tour heading to Australia?

A RADICAL plan for Australia to host this year’s Lions series against the Springboks has been proposed.

The idea has been mooted to the Lions and SARU board, as doubts grow about the safety of travelling to South Africa this summer.

With tight Covid restrictions on travel into the country, Australia are already hosting large crowds for cricket and tennis events. It’s unlikely that travelling supporters

would be permitted entry, however, organisers could tap into a significant pool of Australia-based British, Irish and South Africans.

A profit-sharing model has been proposed as rugby chiefs desperately seek a way for the series to go ahead.

The prospect of hosting the Tests behind closed doors in South Africa is financially unfeasible and there are difficulties around delaying the tour until 2022.

A skeleton plan to host the tour in the UK and Ireland has also been drawn up, however this depends on the speed of vaccine roll-uts and whether crowds will return by the summer.

One source said: ‘We will allow as much time as possible to make the right decision.’

Senior players from England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland have all urged organisers to find a way to make the tour happen.

England hooker Jamie George said: ‘I’m desperate for it to go ahead. The 2017 tour was probably one of the best experience of my life — not just in rugby.’

‘There are so many ex-pats living around Australia from South Africa and the UK and Ireland that we still feel we could fill the grounds,’ Hamish McLennan, the chairman of Rugby Australia, told the Sunday Times.