{"id":226514,"date":"2025-06-30T11:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T11:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/226514\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T11:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T11:38:11","slug":"british-and-irish-lions-2025-mari-itoje-returns-as-captain-to-face-queensland-reds-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/226514\/","title":{"rendered":"British and Irish Lions 2025: Mari Itoje returns as captain to face Queensland Reds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There will be a first Lions tour start not just for the two Irishmen but also for Huw Jones, who forms a midfield partnership with Bundee Aki. It is the third different centre combination in three games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Andrew Porter, Ronan Kelleher and Will Stuart will also start for the first time in the front-row as will Ollie Chessum at lock and Jack Conan at number eight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ireland&#8217;s James Ryan is set to make his Lions debut off the bench against the Reds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Here we go now,&#8221; said Farrell in rainy Brisbane. &#8220;This is proper touring. Games are coming thick and fast. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Three games in eight days and it keeps on rolling after that, so this is the exciting part of the tour for us. We&#8217;ve just been outlining to the lads this morning, actually, what the weeks are going to look like. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Not much training out there on the field, but plenty of mental preparation. We see it as a great opportunity for ourselves to be fast-tracking our ambition, our potential as a team.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There will be a first Lions tour start not just for the two Irishmen but also for Huw&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-226514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114772122276901246","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226514","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=226514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}