British & Irish Lions: The 16 players who will miss the first training camp
British and Irish Lions boss Andy Farrell
Andy Farrell will begin training ground preparations for the British and Irish Lions tour this week without 16 players – more than 40 per cent of his squad of 38.
The Lions are set to take on Argentina in Dublin on June 20 before flying to Australia for a nine-match trip that includes their three-Test series versus Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies.
Farrell named his squad in London on May 8, and he hasn’t had to make any alterations to that selection yet despite some club match-missing concerns surrounding the likes of Ireland’s Tadhg Furlong, Garry Ringrose, Josh van der Flier and Hugo Keenan, along with Scotland’s Zander Fagerson, Huw Jones and Blair Kinghorn.
However, the Lions boss will fly out to Portugal for training following Sunday’s squad assembly in Dublin without a large contingent of his players due to next weekend’s United Rugby Championship (URC) and English Premiership finals and the involvement of Kinghorn in the French Top 14 title race.
Seven players started for Leinster on Saturday
Farrell attended Saturday’s URC semi-final win for Leinster in Dublin over Glasgow and the progress of the Irish side to next Saturday’s Croke Park final versus the Bulls means that it won’t be until the Argentina match week that his 12-strong Leinster contingent can join in with preparations.
Seven of those players – Andrew Porter, Dan Sheehan, Joe McCarthy, James Ryan, Jack Conan, Jamison Gibson-Park and James Lowe – were all starters in Leinster’s 37-19 win over the Warriors, with Ronan Kelleher contributing from the bench.
The rehabbing Furlong (calf), Ringrose (calf), Van der Flier (hamstring) and Keenan (calf) all watch from the stands with the onlooking Farrell.
Aside from the dozen Leinster absentees, the Lions will also be missing England’s Will Stuart and Ollie Chessum, as well as Scotland’s Finn Russell, at their Quinta da Lago training camp as they are all involved in next Saturday’s Bath versus Leicester Tigers Premiership final at Allianz Stadium, Twickenham.
Kinghorn, meanwhile, has recently been nursing a knee injury. According to a medical bulletin on the Toulouse website, he has “completed the final tests and conditioning to validate a return to the squad”.
With the regular season part of the French league having come to a conclusion on Saturday night with Toulouse finishing in first place, their next match will be a semi-final on the same weekend the Lions are due to host Argentina in Ireland.
The absence of 42 per cent of his squad for the non-match training week will leave Farrell working with just 22 players and it will be interesting to learn what reinforcements he brings in. The head coach suggested last month that he has room to officially add two more players to his squad of 38 before they depart for Australia.
It also emerged that there was a contingency plan to call up additional players just for the pre-tour training camp if the number of official squad players chosen for Australia was too low to properly prepare before departure.
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