BBC’s Rugby Union Weekly podcast,<\/a> after the 2025 Lions’ fourth match.<\/p>\n“Why have the Lions not stripped things back? There were so many changes and so many games, why not just go really simple against the Waratahs.<\/p>\n
“Then it gives people more of a chance to show off their X-Factor and bring their personality to the game. Instead of all these intricate plays. There isn’t time for it.”<\/p>\n
Farrell, who won back-to-back Six Nations titles playing in this style with Ireland, included 15 Irishmen in his initial touring squad.<\/p>\n
However handling errors continue to haunt the Lions’ attack – and even the Ireland players who know Farrell’s system have struggled to gel alongside their new team-mates from other nations.<\/p>\n
Former Wales coach Warren Gatland led the last winning Lions tour in 2013 and with the series poised at 1-1, started 10 Wales players in the deciding Test.<\/p>\n
“Gatland played it simple and had a big Welsh contingent that he coached and trusted,” said Ashton, who narrowly missed out on selection for that tour.<\/p>\n
“It seems now that would be easier to implement, as you have a relationship and gameplan that is flowing.<\/p>\n
“I just wonder now what they will do on Wednesday against the Brumbies,” added Ashton about the match that is 10 days before the first Test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British and Irish Lions would benefit from “stripping things back” and adopting a more simple style of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-242710","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\/114806391073788054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242710","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=242710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}