The greatest trick Gatland's Lions could pull on this tour

A surprise player boost to the Lions’ Dublin training camp may distill a little extra team spirit – but the tourists still head south more in great hope rather than ‘massive expectation’, writes James Harrington

The loss of Billy Vunipola for the Lions’ tour of New Zealand is a major blow. But it’s a fair bet that coach Warren Gatland’s disappointment has been mollified at least a little by something else – namely the sudden and unexpected availability of 10 extra tourists for this week’s training camp in Ireland.

Saracens and Leinster losing their respective semi-finals freed Owen Farrell, Tadhg Furlong, Jamie George, Robbie Henshaw, Maro Itoje, George Kruis, Jack McGrath, Seán O’Brien, Johnny Sexton, and Mako Vunipola, for fitness, training and bonding sessions at Carton House, near Dublin.

Those surprise extra 10 take Gatland’s available player tally to 30 – nearly 75 percent of his total squad for the tour. It is more than double the number he had at the first camp in Cardiff. And, given just who is coming, that just might give the Lions a shot at creating something that may, in the right conditions, smell like team spirit. Just a little bit.

That would be the greatest trick Gatland could pull on this tour. It was one Clive Woodward conspicuously and embarrassingly failed to do in 2005. And it’s one that v2017 Lions have the smallest window of opportunity to perfect before the first match on June 3.

His Imperial Galactic Rugby Overlord Steve Hansen warned about the pressure of the ‘massive expectation’ of Lions’ supporters. What pressure is that, exactly, your galactic imperiousness? There’s no pressure on the Lions. Six wins in 38 Tests against the All Blacks does not deliver much in the way of expectation of any description. And certainly not ‘massive expectation’.

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Hope, on the other hand, there’ll be plenty of that. There won’t be enough available free space in the entire country to store all the hope that the Lions’ and their 20,000 legion of fans will bring in their hearts. But, expectation? Nope. There’s none of that.

What the Lions do have on their side is, literally, the great unknown and – if they can generate enough of it between now and mid-tour at the latest – team spirit.

The Lions v2017, for all that 16 of them toured Australia four years ago, have never played together. There’s no video of go-to lineout moves; no footage how the scrum will work (or not); or how Sexton and Joseph may play off each other (or not); any of it. There’s just the jigsaw identification of how they could work (or not), based on internationals and club matches involving the players on opposing sides, or in different competitions.

Until the June 3 match in Whangarei, there’s little evidence of what may be in store for Hansen and his cohorts to begin to study. Whether that actually makes a difference in the Tests is a moot point. A 16 percent success rate against the All Blacks suggests pretty strongly it probably won’t.

Besides, if what the Lions do in New Zealand is set to surprise for the hosts, it’s because will be at least as much of a shock to the tourists.

Even with his stronger-than-expected tour party get-together in Dublin, Gatland will only get all his players together in the same room less than 24 hours before they pick up their boarding passes for the flight from Heathrow.

His Wasps, Exeter, Munster and Scarlets contingent will be unavailable before then as their clubs have the small matter of finals to contest. Toulon’s Leigh Halfpenny, meanwhile, has a Friday-night Top 14 semi-final against La Rochelle to negotiate before he’s allowed out with the Lions.

That’s why having the Saracens and Leinster crowd for an extra week is such a pleasant surprise for the party. Both sets of players know all about team spirit – and both could help instill it in the Lions.

A decent slug of that could offset the tourists’ laughably inadequate preparation time ahead of the first of their demanding-as-hell warm-up matches. Add a splash of the great unknown, a dash of hope … and suddenly you’ve got the makings of a heady tour cocktail – maybe even a pan-hemispheric allblacksblaster.

Probably not, in all seriousness. But hope springs eternal. And Lions’ fans have a lot of that…