Halfway through his post-match chat at the Marvel Stadium in Melbourne on Tuesday night, Andy Farrell, really for the first time on this tour, gave it the Gettysburg Address in terms of what lies in wait for the British and Irish Lions against the Australia in Saturday’s second Test.
The storied Melbourne Cricket Ground. A crowd of 85,000-plus. A chance to win the series and put their names in Lions history.
“If you can’t get up for what’s coming, we’re all in the wrong place,” said Lions coach Farrell. “To me, this is the biggest game of our lives, every one of us.”
That’s a heck of a statement given the magnitude of some of the contests these players have appeared in over the years, but there was no doubting Farrell’s sincerity. This is huge right enough.
The MCG isn’t just a sports stadium, it’s a palace sitting on hallowed ground. It’s gobsmacking in its scale even when empty. When full, or nearly full, it’ll be a momentous place on Saturday night when the Lions walk out there.
But which Lions? The inference from the camp is that Joe McCarthy, a big performer on this trip and a fine player in the first Test, is not going to be fit for Saturday. McCarthy hasn’t trained all week.
Farrell said he will see how the Ireland lock is on Thursday but the team will have been named by then. Too late for Big Joe, sadly.
The word, also, is that Mack Hansen, a strong contender for the bench if all things were equal, is not going to make it either. Farrell says Hansen’s foot injury is progressing but then posed a question of his own about whether he was progressing quickly enough. A rhetorical question, you sense.
