Ex-All Blacks forward Murray Mexted believes that it is a good thing that the British and Irish Lions toured Australia and not New Zealand or South Africa in 2025.
The touring team won the first two Test matches against the Wallabies, setting up a dead rubber of sorts for the third and final game.
However, Joe Schmidt’s Wallabies produced a fantastic performance to ensure that Andy Farrell’s charges did not claim a series whitewash.
This came after the Lions clinched a victory from the jaws of defeat in the second Test courtesy of a late Hugo Keenan try, with Mexted left rather unimpressed by the touring team’s performances overall.
All Blacks and Springboks would hammer the Lions
He believes that while the Lions were a good team, they didn’t have many good players and none good enough to crack a hypothetical World XV.
However, he adds that they were also playing a poor Wallabies outfit, who pitched up in the third Test match, and dismissed any notion of this being a ‘great’ Lions team.
“It really is a wonderful event [the tour], but if you look at the realities of the world, would you put any of those Lions players in a World XV? I’m saying no. Not one. Even after all the players you mentioned, good on you, nice, generous, but not the case, I’m not up to it,” Mexted said on the DSPN podcast with Martin Devlin.
“Then you’d look at the Australian team and ask, ‘Is this a good Australian team?’ And at the beginning of that series, that’s a very average Australian team, and rugby was under the covers a little bit in Australia for the last 12 or 18 months or so. But I’ll tell you what, that’s all changed, and that’s how players become great players.
“If you’re playing hard teams, really hard teams, competitively every week and they’re beating you, and the media is giving you a hammering, you either front up or you bugger off. Those are the only options. And they fronted up big time, and I was delighted because for the life of me, I couldn’t see that Lions team being any bloody good.”
Ex-All Black: Not one British and Irish Lion would make a World XV
He added that had this Lions team come up against the Springboks or All Blacks, the results would have been much different.
“It wouldn’t have been any good touring in New Zealand or South Africa either, because they would have got a bloody hiding,” he said.
“But they would have gone away three zip [against Australia], saying ‘we’re the greatest in the world. Best Lions team of all time.’ What a lot of belly. Not even near the best Lions team.”
He later added: “You only remember the best of the best, and I don’t think that Lions team deserves to be called that, and the Wallabies proved that comprehensively in that last Test; the Lions didn’t look like they were going to score until there were 20 minutes left to go.”
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One more swipe
Overall, Mexted was satisfied by the performance of the Wallabies but couldn’t resist taking another swipe at the Lions.
“I was delighted for rugby. I was delighted for rugby in Australia. I was delighted for New Zealand Rugby because we need the Australians to be really strong, we need it terribly to be competitive, and we need them to be ruthless in defence of their reputation against those teams from up north,” he said.
“They are really good at rating themselves, their media are very good at doing that, their players get carried away and think they are a hell of a lot better than they are and every time they come over to the Southern Hemisphere, they get their curry, particularly in South Africa. But the matches need to be hammered home by Australia and New Zealand, not just New Zealand now and again, and South Africa, it’s the three of us and Argentina now.”