Look, everyone is biased to a certain extent but there are limits.
Look at Lions team predictions from Ireland, England and Wales and you will see respective green, white or red tinges in the line-ups. The Scots don’t have too many notions but even they might through a Greig Laidlaw or Tommy Seymour up for the bench.
Despite the ‘All for One’ marketing campaigns and calls for unity from Lions legends such as Keith Wood and Gavin Hastings, many fans from each country still want their countrymen in the XV to face New Zealand.
It is why SportsJOE would select five Ireland internationals in the Lions team for the First Test – Furlong, O’Mahony, O’Brien, Murray and Sexton [with Owen Farrell at 12] – and pop another few on the bench.
We should not be too surprised, then, when Tom Shanklin calls for fellow Welshman – and former teammate – Sam Warburton to captain the Lions this weekend.
Axing Sean O’Brien, though? That’s another matter entirely.
Shanklin, a Grand Slam winner with Wales and Lion on the 2005 tour, wants Warburton to start at openside but his central argument is flawed. He told BBC 5 Live:
“O’Mahony, O’Brien, Warburton – three have to go into two. O’Mahony, I believe, has to play because he is so good in the lineout. He’s a huge lineout option and we’ve seen how strong that is for the Lions – to catch a lineout and drive is right up there with the Lions strengths.
“It’s just who they pick at No.7. Personally, I’d pick Warburton... he’s the tour captain.
“I know, personally, how good he is. He’s not had his busiest of tours so far but let’s not doubt his class at all.”
Tour captain only means Test captain if the player in question is fully fit and in some semblance of form. Question marks remain over both of those central selection pillars. New Zealand is not the country to be carrying players.
Shanklin did expand on some of Warburton’s other strengths but it smacks of trying to smother the All Blacks rather than taking the fight to them.
“I think he is the best 7 we have in the Lions squad and, therefore, I would go with him... To beat New Zealand, they are going to have to slow their ball down. They have to slow it down and play at their tempo.
“O’Brien is wonderful – he’s a great, great player and he’s very good going forward with the ball in hand – but this is one of the areas I believe why Warburton is the man. There is no better man at slowing the ball down at slowing the ball down than Sam.
“There’s no better man in that contact area from jackling and creating slow ball. That’s why he is in my team.”
O’Brien, let’s not forget, has performed like a man possessed in his two Lions starts on tour. He was a tornado for 55 minutes against Crusaders and put in the full 80 against the Maori and was still winning turnover ball in the closing stages.
This is a man who one Kiwi reporter likened to the great Richie McCaw and another described as ‘a flanker so tough and hard-edged he’s basically a roll of barbed wire in boots’.
This is a man who must start on Saturday.
