During the current tour of Australia, Lions officials put pressure on the Wallabies to release more high-profile international players for the tour matches amid concerns about how competitive they would be.<\/p>\n
The Lions beat Australia’s four Super Rugby teams by an average of 27.5 points, before sealing a series win with victory in the first two Tests against the Wallabies.<\/p>\n
Benazzi says France has no intention of disrupting the usual rotation of Lions tours, which alternate between Australia, New Zealand and South Africa every four years.<\/p>\n
Instead he hopes the new global calendar, that begins next year with the first edition of the biennial Nations Cup, will create opportunities.<\/p>\n
“Of course, we don’t touch the legacy in the south – you keep that,” added Benazzi.<\/p>\n
“We have a lot of projects. We want to see what to expect with the United States – maybe we have a possibility to play there – maybe in Paris or London. We are just thinking about ideas.<\/p>\n
“If you have a link between two institutions then it’s easier to project what we want to do – a warm-up before the tour, a special game maybe every four years as well, in our own countries or outside for development of the game.”<\/p>\n
A full-scale Lions tour of France is an enticing prospect.<\/p>\n
France’s national team, who won this year’s Six Nations, are the strongest they have been for a generation.<\/p>\n
At club level, Toulouse, Bordeaux-Begles and La Rochelle have won the past five editions of the Champions Cup, while the likes of Toulon, Racing 92 and Clermont Auvergne also offer high-quality, multi-national squads and atmospheric venues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the current tour of Australia, Lions officials put pressure on the Wallabies to release more high-profile international…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-304364","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\/114943171234687042","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304364","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=304364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}