Farrell set to make the big calls

AS THE first Test of the Lions series looms, it is Australia who fret over preparation time.

- PAUL REES

The tourists played their fourth match yesterday with all but three players having started at least one game and combinations are developing.

The Wallabies have only today’s very early morning encounter with Fiji in Newcastle to assess their options and give their engine a service before the Test series starts in Brisbane. They have not played as a side for more than seven months.

They lost to Ireland in Dublin at the end of their tour of the home unions, pipped by Gus McCarthy’s try and Jack Crowley’s conversion with seven minutes to go.

Thirteen of Ireland’s 23 that day are in Australia with the majority of them in contention for a Test place, along with hooker Dan Sheehan and the prop Tadhg Furlong who missed the autumn series through injury.

The Wallabies may have lost, but showed on the tour that they had risen from the ruins of their 2023 World Cup campaign when defeat to Fiji in Saint-Etienne meant they exited a World Cup at the group stage for the first time.

It is their first meeting with Fiji since then and under head coach Joe Schmidt they have become not so much a team transformed as one which is now clear in the direction it is heading. They have the weaponry to test the Lions in defence, but just as the warm-up acts so far have been overpowered so the Wallabies will need to muscle up.

The warm-up matches on Lions tours used to be hard-fought affairs. Now, given the disparity between the teams which invariably tells in the second half when the Lions bring on an array of regular Test starters and their hosts tend to have benches made up of old props or novices, they are an opposed training run with the defence given a workout in the first 25 minutes before the attack takes over.