LONG READ Why Blair Kinghorn should be nailed on as the Lions starting 15

In some ways the author of this column would rather state if he had a favourite child, or parent, than declare that he has a favourite starting Lions fullback. Ruining the confidence of your parents/offspring and destroying the dynamic of a loving family somehow feels like the sensible option when compared to the nuclear social media fallout of stating a preference for a particular player. It comes to something when you’d rather shatter the unconditional love of a family member rather than face a flurry of direct messages at 2am from a bloke who’s on his eighth can of unnecessarily strong craft lager, but such is the massive interest in the Lions and the debate that follows – it’s why we all love it.

The family metaphor above is, of course, hyperbolic, but to continue its overuse, when it comes to selecting the Lions’ starting full-back for the Australian tour, Blair Kinghorn and Hugo Keenan are the two favourite children. There are of course other members of the full-back family who could get selected, but at this moment in time they feel more like distant cousins. Marcus Smith is of course playing full-back for England currently and will undoubtedly be on the tour due to his versatility in playing both ten and fifteen at Test level. Freddie Steward is also not without his merits, especially with the current law tweak requiring no ‘blockers’ being allowed to stand in front of the player catching the ball. Plus, there’s also Blair Murray who for Welsh supporters in recent weeks has been the reassuring stroke on the head that many of use required.

Whilst favouring a particular Lions’ player over another has always caused foaming from the mouth, it’s made even more difficult on this tour in that favouring Kinghorn over Keenan is something that seemed unthinkable two seasons ago. Hugo Keenan is a magnificent player and has been for the past four seasons. He has feathers in the air, has positioning which makes even modern GPS appear iffy, tackles like a savannah-dwelling mammal protecting its young and hits the line as well as anyone in test rugby. However, this was all before December 2024, when Blair Kinghorn joined Toulouse – since then a lot has changed.

Kinghorn was a tidy player when he was at Edinburgh. Switching between ten and 15, he let no one down, but now at Toulouse, he’s solid gold. At 6ft 5in, he is literally head and shoulder above all most backs in the game and it’s not height for height’s sake. As we’ve seen during this Six Nations, Kinghorn’s work in the air has been superlative. With the recent tweak to the law regarding ‘blockers’ under the high ball, strapping fullbacks are back in fashion. The days where you could rely on three forwards to block the chasers and protect you from the initial tackle are over – full-backs once again need to be able to catch the ball and also catch a clout when they land. But Kinghorn isn’t a ‘big’ full-back whose size comes at the detriment of speed, he’s also incredibly rapid and gobbles up the turf beneath him. Anecdotally he’s the fastest in the Scotland squad and once you have big people running at big speeds, they cause big problems.

Kinghorn carried double the distance of any other player in the competition – that’s right double. He carried 857.9m, the next closest was Duhan van der Merwe with 478m. During this Six Nations he has required a double tackle at minimum in the wide channels and he has the receipts to prove it – he was top for linebreaks with nine. He either broke the line when the ‘double tackle’ didn’t arrive or dished off a pass when it did – he was also the top off-loader in the 2025 Six Nations (13).

Whilst we’re talking about Finn Russell, his likely selection as the starting outside half would provide another reason to select Kinghorn at 15.

Together with Finn Russell’s long accurate miss-passes, Scotland were able to get to ‘the edge’ more quickly and regularly than arguably any other team in the championship. At times they were seemingly able to generate overlaps, from first phase, which simply doesn’t happen in modern test rugby. Where most teams were trying to find the edge, Scotland seemed to have happily dangled their feet over it for the much of the Six Nations.

Whilst we’re talking about Finn Russell, his likely selection as the starting outside half would provide another reason to select Kinghorn at 15. When we talk about combinations with outside halves, the old-school narrative would focus on who’s playing at nine or 12 – inside and outside the ten. But in the modern game the link with the 15 is as important. With the 15 often being the ‘out the back’ option, having a 15 who understand his 10 (and vice versa) is as important as the link between the nine and 12.

One argument that is sometimes used against Kinghorn is that he isn’t really a modern back-three player. In that he’s viewed as a 10/15 not a 15/14/11. For some reason people tend to think that he can’t switch between wing and fullback as seamlessly as other back three players. But whilst that may have been true in Edinburgh (where he largely played at ten at 15), at Toulouse he has featured on the wing on plenty of occasions.

Hopefully this column hasn’t come across as a denigration of Hugo Keenan, who is a fantastic player. The reality is that Keenan would be more likely to fit into Farrell’s system for obvious reasons. However, based on form, stats and the laws as they stand, Kinghorn should be inked in as the starting 15, when the First Test comes around on July 19 in Brisbane.