LONG READ Mick Cleary: Five things Andy Farrell must get right this week

The anticipation has built for months, and now the curtain can be raised. On Friday night in Dublin, we will have our first look at Andy Farrell’s British and Irish Lions vintage of 2025.

These Lions are not yet at full strength, with some players arriving late to camp through club commitments, and others nursing knocks and bruises from a gruelling season, but whatever the personnel, there are several tenets which cannot be neglected.

As he prepares to lead a Lions team for the first time, here are the five non-negotiables on Farrell’s to-do list.

1. Victory

Of course the final reckoner for the trip will be the outcome of the series against the Wallabies. But a Lions tour is all about momentum – finding it, building it and sustaining it. There is so much flux, so many injury mishaps and scrambled selection plans, that managing the moment for all concerned, coaches, players, support staff, is what it is all about. Focus too much on what lies ahead, and you risk derailing the whole thing. Live in the moment and master it. The future will look after itself.

Twenty years ago a cobbled together Pumas team gave Clive Woodward’s side an almighty hurry-up in Cardiff prior to departure with only the boot of Jonny Wilkinson deep into added time saving blushes as he kicked the goal for a face-saving draw. Mind you, that minor uplift didn’t last long as the Lions were All Blackwashed in New Zealand.

This 2025 tour has to be won for the longer-term credibility of the Lions. Happy vibes and decent performances just won’t cut it. Australia are the weakest of the three southern hemisphere countries albeit they have given us three of the best series imaginable in 1989, 2001 and 2013. Victory is the goal and Friday has to set the tone.

2. The mood music

Farrell has had a good start with the opening address of the week delivered by Johnny Sexton. The former Lions and Ireland fly-half may be wet behind the ears as a coach but he is as perceptive and hard-nosed a sportsman as you would want on any field of action. And he gets the Lions.

For all his experience as a coach, Graham Henry in 2001 failed to grasp what makes the Lions tick. Clive Woodward tried a different tack four years later – go big, throw money at it, fall flat – forgetting the most valuable asset for a rugby team is a sense of togetherness. It may sound trite, it may sound romantic tosh but it is true. Friday night’s opposition, the Pumas, have been the game’s standard bearers in that regard over the last two and a half decades, maximising what they have through the intensity of their camaraderie as well as, of course, sharp-minded rugby brains.

The Lions have to get to that elevated state of being in double-quick time. There is barely an opportunity to forge relationships on the field for one simple reason – the same XV rarely reappears. Sexton hit the nail on the head when saying “rivalry has to be left at the door”.  Again, Friday night’s game will tell us plenty about the buy-in from players.

3. Claim the headlines

The blithering fools who decided a winter sport should be pushed deep into the summer months should take notice of just what attention the Lions receive in the coming weeks. A crackerjack cricket series against India starts at Headingley on Friday just as the Lions prepare to take on Argentina in Dublin. Wimbledon is on the horizon, so too the Tour de France while Rorymania is sure to erupt when the Open begins in Portrush in mid-July.

By the time the Lions round off their series in Sydney on 2^nd August, half the population will be sizzling on a beach somewhere. That is why they have to make the TV public in particular sit up and take notice as soon as possible.

There was a disturbing Ofcom report released on Monday which showed rugby’s audience among 18-34s has dropped off alarmingly with only 5% showing an interest in the sport. The Lions narrative has to garner headlines at every turn, hopefully through the sweep and grandeur of their play. Some hard-knock stuff also fits the bill. There may well be reservations about staging money-raising fixtures before the tour actually starts but Argentina are quality opponents (despite not having some of their France-based players available) and a humdinger of a match would create a fine precedent for what is to come.

4. A sense of identity

There has often been cat-and-mouse talk on Lions tours about holding back ploys, not revealing one’s stylistic hand too soon for fear of giving the opposition an indicator as to how the Test team will play. A lot of that is guff – and there is nothing wrong with that as it feeds the need for intrigue – as the Lions know only too well they have little time to cement a discernible blueprint behind closed doors in training let alone kid anyone by playing a contrived and different style in the lead-in matches themselves.

Of course, once the Test XV starts to take shape there will be this or that move held back but the overriding importance of being settled and on each other’s radar will ensure we will very quickly have an idea of what this Lions iteration is about.

There is little reason to doubt it will have a Farrell Ireland feel about it: well structured, game-savvy, tooled up but with a capacity to strike and strike hard. Farrell, after all, loosened the reins of Joe Schmidt’s Ireland. It is no longer to be expected a northern hemisphere pack can muscle its way past an Australia team. Schmidt’s Wallabies gave a decent account of themselves up north last year.

Jamison Gibson-Park’s injury problems are a worry for the Lions but every single member of the squad knows they will have to step into the breach at a moment’s notice. We can expect between six to eight call-ups for injury over the next few weeks. There will have to be new players but the identity will stay the same.

5. The adventure begins

It has been a long time coming but it will be over in a flash and the 2025 Lions will never play again once the final whistle blows in Sydney in six weeks’ time. Every second of the experience has to matter, has to be savoured and Friday night is very much part of that adventure. It’s true the moment of landing in the host country always does bring with it a special frisson. But a tour of Australia presents nothing like as daunting a fixture list as it would in New Zealand or South Africa.

Schmidt has already indicated he will be holding back his Test players from the Super Rugby franchises which face the Lions across the opening couple of weeks. The Lions, then, will have to create an internal competitive dynamic. Farrell will be delighted if that comes to pass but he also appreciates what is about to unfold for the entire touring group has to be memorable on every level. The starting gun is poised in Dublin.