Elite will have no time for Pumas

PHIL Kearns never played a game of Test rugby against the British and Irish Lions: a stranger-than-fiction fact that bears repeating.

- CHRIS HEWETT

So here goes. One of the half-dozen finest hookers of the modern era many would put the Sydneysider second only to the all-time-great New Zealand front rower Sean Fitzpatrick, with whom he endured and enjoyed the most intense of rivalries - somehow spent a decade in the green-and-gold Wallaby jersey without once wearing it against the red-shirted hordes from the old country.

Simon Poidevin, one hell of a flanker, didn’t manage it either.

The same goes for fellow 1991 World Cup winners like Marty Roebuck, Rob Egerton, Jason Little, Tony Daly, Ewen McKenzie, Rod McCall, Willie Ofahengaue and Troy Coker not to mention those of a later vintage, from Lote Tuqiri, Stirling Mortlock, Matt Giteau and Quade Cooper amongst the backs to Nathan Sharpe, David Wilson and Phil Waugh up front. And by way of beggaring belief completely, we can throw in the majestic David Pocock for good measure.

The point being that even in the age of year-round union, it is all too easy for a triple A-star international to his play his best rugby at the worst moment. With the Lions on a four-year cycle and the traditional host nations working to a schedule three times the length, a chap needs not only to stay fit, hold his form and stay on the right side of all the right people, but also to strike lucky with his timing.