Picking a Lions squad for the 2021 tour with two players from every professional club in Britain & Ireland
The Lions squad announcement is one of the most exciting days in the Northern Hemisphere rugby calendar. Every four years months of debate is put to rest with around 40 players from Britain & Ireland picked for the tour. 2021 is no different with the upcoming tour against South Africa.
What would happen if you put a simple rule onto selection: every professional club in Britain & Ireland has to be represented.
For years pundits have talked about the difference in the number of professional clubs in England compared to the other home nations. This fantasy Lions selection gets to see how the professional club set up across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland affects the Lions squad.
The English Premiership is made up of 12 teams but I will be selecting from 13. Saracens were relegated in 2020 due to salary cap breaches but they are still a fully professional club. Wales, Scotland and Ireland have 10 professional teams between them making up the majority of the Guinness PRO14 league. There are four Welsh regions, four Irish provinces and two Scottish professional clubs.
With 23 clubs to choose from, two players per club makes up a slightly larger squad of 46 players. Which, as it turns out, perfectly creates two squads: one for the test matches and one for the midweek matches. Some things just work out.
My research consisted of going through all the 23 squads and noting down all realistic international players. This was mostly made up of current squad members in the Six Nations 2021 or recently capped players. Also, this massive player pool included uncapped players that have been involved in international squads and players hotly debated in the media and social media – prime examples being Exeter’s Sam & Joe Simmons and Harlequins’ Alex Dombrandt.
It is worth mentioning a few things at this point.
Injuries are not taken into account, so the Dragons’ Ross Moriarty, Ospreys’ Gareth Anscombe and Wasps’ recently injured Jack Willis are available for selection. The assumption of blanket peak physical match fitness makes this a whole lot easier.
Another rule was only considering one player, per club, in each position across the starting 15. This led to two major omissions, both at tighthead prop. Exeter have England’s Harry Williams and Wales’ Thomas Francis in their squad – I chose Francis for my player pool based on caps.
The Leinster match up at tighthead is the biggest club matchup across all positions across the 23 clubs. Andrew Porter and Tadhg Furlong are battling for the 3 shirt for club and country (and maybe for the Lions in 2021). I have just picked Porter due to his scrum dominance in the recent Autumn Nations Cup, a hugely important aspect of the game when playing South Africa.
There are also potential Lions players that don’t play their club rugby in Britain & Ireland, these players won’t be available for selection. This means Scottish first choice fly half Finn Russell is not available because he plays his club rugby in Paris. Arguably this is the largest omission from my wider player pool. The debate about his selection in the real world will continue until squad selection day but for this fantasy selection, that decision is sorted. Plus without the French league and Japanese league players it keeps this squad at the magical 46 players.
Finally, I do not know everything about every club. I can see some fans saying “Why isn’t X even in the wider player pool?!”. I have done my very best.
182 players down to 46, two from each club.
Starting selection was difficult with many different names all over the place on the spreadsheet. The fixed structure of players per position made it a lot easier. My 46 man squad is five more players than the 2017 initial real Lions squad. Four of these extra players are from the front row and second row. Lions tours are famously brutal and physical so this led to picking extra players in the most physical positions. The final extra player is a scrum-half. The replacement scrum-half is the reason for this, having four 9s on this fantasy tour means many options for the type of impact player to come on.
I started selection with my captain. The captain is a vital decision for the Lions as leadership and emotion play huge roles on the tour. For me, it has to be Maro Itoje. He leads in every game he plays, regardless of whether he has (C) next to his name or not and his off the field persona is fitting for a Lions captain. One down, 45 to go. My second Saracens player was Owen Farrell, I simply couldn’t imagine this fantasy squad without him.
From there I went to the clubs with the fewest potential players and clubs with obvious selections. London Irish, Newcastle, Worcester and Leicester had the fewest players in the wider player pool. Leicester feels like the outlier in these four clubs with the history and success of the club. However, the departure of Manu Tuilagi and Jonny May in 2020 has led to only four viable Lions options at the Tigers. The Leicester selection was probably the easiest of any of the 23 clubs with prop Ellis Genge and fly half George Ford in the squad.
Gloucester is an interesting case with having incredible riches on the wing – Jonny May, Louis Rees-Zammit and Ollie Thorley are all in the Gloucester squad. I picked May and Rees-Zammit in this Lions squad and they both have a strong chance of making the real squad in 2021. May is an established international now, hunting down England’s try scoring record and is known for his serious turn of pace. However, he might only be the third fastest in the Gloucester squad. Rees-Zammit has a different level of speed (a “6th gear” seems to be the popular phrase by pundits) and the finish ability to match. The Welsh coaching staff and fans alike are very, very excited about Rees-Zammit.
As the selection process continued particular players in certain positions stood out and this led to selection. For example Andrew Porter as mentioned previously, Exeter’s Stuart Hogg and Scarlets’ Liam Williams. Hogg is playing some of the best rugby of his career currently and Williams is a class operator across all facets of the game, equally effective across any of the back three positions.
Exeter are among the clubs that, with the two player rule, multiple big players were always going to miss out. Jonny Gray, Jonny Hill, Jack Nowell and Henry Slade have all missed out. This is a very similar story across all the PRO14 clubs because of the small number of clubs per country. The best PRO14 player to miss out of my squad is definitely Leinster’s James Ryan followed by 99 capped George North and then the Edinburgh back row duo of Hamish Watson and Jamie Ritchie.
The most interesting selection dilemma that I encountered was from Wasps vs Ospreys. The decision was between:
Joe Launchbury & Justin Tipuric vs Alun Wyn Jones & Jack Willis
These individual decisions were throughout the selection process and were great fun in this fantasy squad so I can only imagine how much fun Warren Gatland must have in real life. All four of the players above have strong cases for making the Lions squad. Wyn Jones & Willis were just selected because of Wyn Jones’ experience and leadership for the tour and Willis’ point of difference around his turnover expertise.
After lots of tinkering here is my final squad:
And here is the test squad and the midweek squad.
Duhan van der Merwe is starting for his size and Luke Cowan-Dickie for his carrying and skills in the loose. George Ford is on the bench for that second playmaker option to change the game in the second half. One of the great things about the Lions is the emergence of players on the tour itself – Alex Dombrant getting a Lions test cap from this fantasy squad would be an amazing made up story.
I think this squad could do a serious job against South Africa and every club fan across Britain & Ireland would be incredibly proud of their club being represented in the famous red jersey.
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