{"id":218441,"date":"2025-06-27T11:10:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T11:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/218441\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T11:10:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T11:10:09","slug":"david-campese-slams-british-and-irish-lions-over-australian-islanders-planet-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/218441\/","title":{"rendered":"David Campese slams British and Irish Lions over ‘Australian Islanders’ : Planet Rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Wallabies great David Campese has slammed the number of Southern Hemisphere players in the British and Irish Lions squad, describing them as\u00a0the \u2018British and Irish and Pacific Island Lions\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eight of the Lions\u2019 38-man squad were born in the Southern Hemisphere, including Australian-natives Mack Hansen, Sione Tuipulotu and Finlay Bealham, and this has already become a heavy talking point in the build-up to the series.<\/p>\n

Scotland international Pierre Schoeman \u2013 who was born in South Africa but qualified on residency grounds \u2013 has previously hit back at the claims over the number of foreign players in the squad, saying:\u00a0\u201cIf you\u2019re good enough to play for your country and then you\u2019re good enough to play for the Lions and you\u2019re selected, obviously you\u2019re going to do that,\u201d said Schoeman, who has 42 Scotland caps after qualifying through residency.<\/p>\n

\u201cScotland is home for us, my wife and myself and other players as well. You embrace that, you fully take that on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like Outlander. You move to a different country and now that\u2019s your house. You live there. You buy into the culture and now to represent the British and Irish Lions, you fully buy into that, you fully submerge into that.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing else matters, not your past, not the future, it\u2019s about the now.<\/p>\n

David Campese slams Southern Hemisphere Lions<\/p>\n

Speaking on TalkSport, Campese<\/a> described the team as the \u2018British and Irish and Pacific Island Lions\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard when you\u2019ve got four nations in one team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe British and Irish Lions<\/a>, sorry, the British and Irish and Pacific Island Lions, I\u2019m going to call them, because you\u2019ve got so many Australian Islanders in there. It is going to be a very interesting game.\u201d<\/p>\n

British and Irish Lions team: Winners and losers as Andy Farrell copies Warren Gatland\u2019s template as forward\u2019s stocks \u2018soar\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Will Genia reveals where the Wallabies are \u2018a little bit better\u2019 than the British & Irish Lions<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just the Lions that were on Campese\u2019s hit list, as he also gave a scathing view on the state of rugby union in Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Australian rugby, we haven\u2019t got any culture. No one cares, no one knows who we are,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you haven\u2019t got culture or history, you haven\u2019t got anything. Unfortunately, that\u2019s where we are.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe\u2019ve got Joe Schmidt as our coach, who still doesn\u2019t know about our culture and history. He\u2019s now got Les Kiss involved, who\u2019s a rugby league guy and who went out and played and coached in Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to try and play a style of rugby that people want to watch, but at the moment it\u2019s a very up-and-down defensive game.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0British and Irish Lions: Andy Farrell backs \u2018hungry\u2019 Henry Pollock to be \u2018real point of difference\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Wallabies great David Campese has slammed the number of Southern Hemisphere players in the British and Irish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[186,5313,30168,225,522,12,4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-218441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-british-and-irish-lions","10":"tag-david-campese","11":"tag-home-page","12":"tag-international","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-rugby","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114755025440190630","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}