won the final Test in Sydney<\/a> to salvage some pride, the spoils went to the Lions as Andy Farrell masterminded the series win thanks to their earlier victories in Brisbane and Melbourne.<\/p>\nIrish flanker Beirne said he was unsure whether he would make the team for the opening Test, which the Lions won 27-19, but he grabbed his opportunity and comes away as one of the stars of the tour.<\/p>\n
“It’s a massive honour but more about the series win for me,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a bittersweet moment. It’s a class moment we’ve won the series, but we’ve lost tonight.. but as Faz [head coach Andy Farrell] said, we’ll get over it because we’ve won the series.<\/p>\n
“I was unsure whether Faz was going to pick me, so when you see your name on the board, I knew it was an opportunity for me, but if I didn’t play well he would take me out just as quick as he put me in. I needed to step up, as did all of the players, and we did that.”<\/p>\n
There is not a lot the 33-year-old has not experienced on a rugby pitch, but Saturday’s 22-12 win for Australia did throw up a first for Beirne, with the game suspended for 40 minutes because of lightning in the vicinity of Stadium Australia.<\/p>\n
“It was just a bit strange,” said the Munster player.<\/p>\n
“I’ve never experienced anything like that, so it was a bit of the unknown. You’re told it’s going to be 45 minutes so you try to relax a bit before getting back up and then all of a sudden it’s seven minutes and you’re switching on to try and focus the mind again.<\/p>\n
“I’ve never experienced that before, but I have now and will know what to expect the next time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tadhg Beirne said being named British and Irish Lions player of the series after defeat by Australia in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-312619","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\/114960701126565651","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312619","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=312619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}