'WE NEED TO BE BETTER THAN THAT' DEMANDS FARRELL

ANDY FARRELL demanded an improvement from his British and Irish Lions when they arrive in Australia after they slipped to a 28-24 defeat by Argentina in Dublin.

- DUNCAN BECH

The Lions lost their opening tour match for the first time since 1971 after their second-half fightback was overturned when Santiago Cordero finished the match-winning try in the 59th minute.

They headed down under yesterday and will face the Western Force on Saturday. Farrell is seeking an immediate response to the error-strewn display seen at a sold-out Aviva Stadium on Friday.

"We made it a tough game. Congratulations to Argentina, they thoroughly deserved to win the match.

"I'm sure that's a big moment in Argentinean rugby history," Farrell said.

"We had plenty of opportunities and we should have done better to convert them, but the whole story of the game is that we compounded too many errors.

"I wouldn't give familiarity as an excuse. We need to be better than that. The Lions are good players coming together.

"We won't sugar-coat this. We need to be honest because if we're not honest, how do we gain trust with each other?

"Losing hurts, especially in this jersey. We need to find the solutions pretty quickly and be honest with ourselves because some good has to come from this.

"Of course we asked a lot of the players and maybe we put too much pressure on the side because it looked like we were a little disconnected at times.

"We'll review what we said we were going to do as a team. We need to make sure we get something positive from this because it's all about how we move forward.

"Some players will be happy and some players won't and will be dying to get another chance out there. We've got to learn a lot of lessons from that.