As Ben Stiller once proclaimed in a Tom Cruise parody sketch, ‘Looks like this mission got a hell of a lot more impossible-er’
New Zealand are considering throwing the kitchen sink at the Lions in 2017, according to NZRU chief executive Steve Tew.
The union is looking into the possibility of matching the northern-hemisphere tourists up with their five Super Rugby sides in two years’ time.
Tew says the Super Rugby season will be paused to accommodate matches. Teams including Auckland Blues and Canterbury Crusaders could then offer a hell of a lot tougher contest than the old format of regions, such as Wellington and Hawkes Bay, testing themselves against Europe’s best.
Tew comments, ‘Whether it’s inevitable, I wouldn’t go quite so far yet. There is a big difference between 2005 [when the Lions last toured] and 2017 and that is in 2005 the Super Rugby competition had finished and players were back in their provinces. In 2017 we will be pausing Super Rugby and therefore players will still be in their Super Rugby environment so it is much more difficult to run a provincial side at that time.’
No final decision will be made until May but Tew is still of the mind to stage Lions matches far and wide, over the country’s two land masses [islands].
He adds, ‘The Lions series for example has to flow logically from a travel perspective because we are likely to have in the first part of the tour, we could have 10 or 15,000 supporters, many of whom will be on the roads, following the team. So, you don’t want to be in Whangarei on the Saturday and Invercargill on the Tuesday, that wouldn’t work.’
