Baa-Baas ‘Test' Would Solve The Lions Tour Conundrum

Sometimes you have to ask why people ask questions when something has already been decided upon and accepted by all.

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I had a meeting earlier this week with someone quite influential within the game, who told me that the idea of shortening the Lions tours had already been agreed by all the stakeholders and that this will be rolled out in four years’ time for the South African tour.

I was told that everybody knew this before the start of the last tour including the Lions management and it is accepted that unless the Lions could come up with more money to pay for the release of players nothing would change.

It is an inevitable consequence of the global season but by a quirk of fate has been given an opportunity to show that shortening tours will appear not to disadvantage the Lions and may in fact boost the chances of winning the series.

A shortened series would, it was said, allow time after the end of the club season for proper preparation before starting the games.

That may be true, but the quirk of fate is the fact that the next Lions tour is to South Africa, a country that is on the same time-line as the UK which means there is no need for recovery time from the flight.

Unlike Australia and New Zealand where it can take up to ten days to recover from the flights and jetlag, a trip to South Africa is no more strenuous than flying to Spain, just a bit longer.