To say the last couple of days have been a blur for Blair Kinghorn is putting it mildly. As recently as the early hours of Sunday he was celebrating Toulouse\u2019s Top 14 title success in Paris and doing interviews clad only in a pair of budgie smugglers. Now here he is wearing a British & Irish Lions tracksuit, squinting into the Australian sunshine and trying his hardest to focus on the next onrushing target.<\/p>\n
The Scotland full-back, the last originally-chosen squad member to arrive, will not be involved in the Lions\u2019 midweek game against the Reds but is earmarked to feature against the Waratahs in Sydney on Saturday. All being well a potential slot in the Test XV could follow but even for a class act like Kinghorn it is going to take a lot of frantic paddling below the surface to get up to speed.<\/p>\n
To some extent the 28-year-old\u2019s ability to adapt swiftly has already been tested. Arriving at the team hotel shortly before midnight he was allocated a room which he assumed would be empty given the lateness of the hour. \u201cI was thinking, \u2018Surely there won\u2019t be anyone in the room\u2019 so I go in and chuck the bags down.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a shock for all concerned, then, when the Lions captain Maro Itoje suddenly sat bolt upright in the bed next to him. \u201cI was like \u2018Uh, sorry\u2019. He\u2019d been sleeping and I woke him up. It was funny. He woke up, shook my hand and went straight back to sleep.\u201d As Lions welcomes go, it definitely belonged at the surreal end of the scale.<\/p>\n
Once the jetlag eases and he finally works out what day it is, though, Kinghorn\u2019s recent experiences could prove invaluable for the Lions. Switching to Toulouse from Edinburgh has helped to improve him as a player and, as a consequence, he is now in a position to add a touch of that winning mentality to the mix ahead of the Test series against the Wallabies.<\/p>\n
For a start, as a teammate of the world\u2019s best player Antoine Dupont, he is comfortable mixing in high-level company. \u201cAt Toulouse the squad is so deep and so talented that you\u2019ve got to be on top of your game. It\u2019s high pressure, but it makes you thrive.\u201d He is hoping for something similar with the Lions. \u201cEveryone\u2019s here to win the Test series and have a successful tour. Every training session is going to be competitive. Everyone\u2019s motivated and that\u2019s what you want. That brings the best out of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
The long-striding Scot can also operate at both full-back and on the wing, having also played Test rugby at 10. It could give Farrell the useful option of picking a 6-2 bench but, either way, Kinghorn knows he has scant time to waste in which to stake a claim. \u201cThe next couple of days will be the big days for me to learn everything but hopefully I\u2019ll catch up pretty quickly. All I can do is learn as fast as I can and show what I can do if I get the chance to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kinghorn, who reckons a Lions tour of France would be \u201cawesome\u201d and potentially a big hit with Gallic audiences, is in a not dissimilar boat to Jamison Gibson-Park, Hugo Keenan and James Ryan, all of whom will be making their Lions debuts against the Reds.<\/p>\n
The previously untested half-back pairing of Gibson-Park and Finn Russell will be the subject of particular attention but forwards coach John Dalziel also expects his pack to learn the lessons of the Western Force game when the restarts, in particular, were problematic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a bit of communication, a bit of skill error when a couple weren\u2019t caught and a bit of people trying to fix it on their own. We had a chat at half-time and it is something we will have a heightened interest in.\u201d<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Dalziel has already been in contact with the legendary Jim Telfer, the godfather of Lions forward coaching, who also hails from the Borders and has shared one or two nuggets of advice with him.<\/p>\n If this Lions squad scales the same Everest-sized peaks as some of their predecessors reached under Telfer\u2019s tutelage it will be some effort but, at this stage, Farrell is urging his players not to get overly carried away against a Reds team guided by Les Kiss, the Wallabies\u2019 next head coach-in-waiting: \u201cDesperation is not a good thing because it makes people do things out of character and we need to be more composed than that.\u201d<\/p>\n Quick GuideQueensland Reds v British & Irish Lions teamsShow<\/p>\n Queensland Reds:<\/b> Campbell (capt); Anderson, Flook, Paisami, Ryan; McLaughlin-Phillips, Thomas; Ross, Faessler, Toomaga-Allen, Canham, Salakaia-Loto, Uru, Bryant, Brial.<\/p>\n Replacements:<\/b> Nasser, Blake, Fa\u2019agase, Smith, Blyth, Vest, Werchon, Henry.<\/p>\n British & Irish Lions :<\/b> Keenan; Freeman, Jones, Aki, Van der Merwe; Russell, Gibson-Park; Porter, Kelleher, Stuart, Itoje (capt), Chessum, Curry, Morgan, Conan.<\/p>\n Replacements:<\/b> Cowan-Dickie, Genge, Bealham, Ryan, Earl, Mitchell, F Smith, Ringrose.<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n Itoje, meanwhile, has reiterated that modern players remain hugely motivated by a Lions jersey even at a time when mooted breakaway leagues and world club championships are threatening the game\u2019s status quo. \u201cPlayers want to play for the Lions and that\u2019s not going to change for generations to come,\u201d stressed Itoje flatly. \u201cIt was the same in the 1950s and it will be the same in 2050.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To say the last couple of days have been a blur for Blair Kinghorn is putting it mildly.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-228872","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\/114777135870225539","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228872","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=228872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}