Steve Borthwick has picked six British & Irish Lions on his bench with a further nod to the growing importance of the endgame
Selecting your best XV to start a big rugby match feels increasingly quaint these days, as redolent of a different era as the Generation Game or Starsky & Hutch. To the point where you half expect to find the home team sheet to face New Zealand this weekend has D-N-A-L-G-N-E printed at the top of it. Even with the All Blacks in town, the traditional order of selection no longer applies.
Instead it is all about the endgame. On this occasion Steve Borthwick has picked six British & Irish Lions on his bench compared with only four in his starting lineup. At some point around the 50th minute on Saturday there will be a mass discarding of XXL tracksuits and a whole fresh set of white orcs will rumble on. As South Africa’s “Bomb Squad” have long since shown, it can be mighty hard to combat.
There is just one small snag. When you are playing against the world’s second-best team it is important to start fast as well. Sitting around awaiting the cavalry charge of Tom Curry, Ellis Genge, Henry Pollock and co will look like less of a genius idea if the All Blacks, as they were against Scotland at Murrayfield, are 17-0 ahead at half-time.
