Irish-heavy Lions break new ground with Dublin visit

Perhaps, given the composition of the squad and staff, Dublin is the only appropriate place for this British and Irish Lions summer to begin.

- HARRY LATHAM-COYLE

A deep Irish brogue has been evident throughout the delivery of the tour from the moment Andy Farrell was confirmed as head coach, a record contingent of 15 familiar faces taken with him in the quadrennial assembly and much of his coaching team Dublin-drawn, too. There are heavy connections in the Wallabies camp, too, Australia head coach Joe Schmidt having laid the foundations upon which his former assistant has most impressively built.

Come matchday, the Lions will be cloaked in familiar red, but even their training kits have been green in their week in the Emerald Isle. The long lineage of this touring team is still able to break new ground with tonight's encounter with Argentina under the glass banks of the Aviva Stadium, the first time the Lions have had an outing on Irish soil. Such encounters may only be an hors d'ouevre to the feast of rugby to follow once Farrell and his squad land down under, but these fixtures are commercially significant, and give those unable to travel to Australia a swim in the sea of red - provided they can stomach the prices for tickets, travel and lodgings in a city where a certain level of surging comes with the territory on rugby weekends like these.

There has been an undercurrent of chitter-chatter, verging on criticism, about the heavy Irish influence in Farrell's squad, which was brushed away brusquely by assistant coach Johnny Sexton this week. "Well, Ireland have done pretty well over the last few years, having won the [Six Nations] championship last year, the grand slam the year before, so you're probably looking over the last three years," Sexton rather rightly said, before pointing out that their familiarity with the head coach would probably prove useful as the Lions race to get up to speed.