Before leaving a rainy Sydney to return to (a sunny!) Blighty, I sat down with fellow rugby fans in a Darling Harbour bistro to dissect a British and Irish Lions tour which, by all accounts, blew everyone away.
It is fair to say that I was within the group of those who had questions as to whether the 2025 tour would be the last to Australia, but following a 2-1 series win for the tourists which could have been a reverse result there’s no doubt the Lions need to return Down Under.
The deciding second Test at Melbourne’s MCG might have been one of the greatest rugby occasions I have ever witnessed, while Sydney was epic despite the weather.
And Rugby Australia chief Phil Waugh will be over the moon with the tour, despite the series loss, given it is set to overturn the organisation’s $36.8m (£18.9m) 2024 deficit and see them return a surplus for 2025.
More than 450,000 tickets were sold for the nine-match tour across Australia, with over 90,000 at the second Test and 80,000 at the third.
Waugh said after the first Test that the touring fans, numbering over 40,000, contributed to over 500,000 pints being drunk in Brisbane while the tourism boost is set to be worth around £250m to the Aussie economy.
Quantity over quality
When the numbers are that good the quality of rugby doesn’t usually matter, but the Wallabies taking the scalp of the British and Irish Lions at the Sydney Olympic stadium and denying the tourists a first unbeaten tour of the professional era has done endless amounts of good PR for the Australian rugby machine.
Many were suggesting the team should be dropped from the touring roster and replaced with Argentina amid fears the home fans no longer cared about this code of rugby, but with a Rugby World Cup two years away the sport looks like it has so much potential.
And the country itself is such a good one for touring; it has vastly different cities, such as Melbourne and Cairns, to experience; it is culturally very close to the touring nations, and it has the capacity to stage a tour in a way New Zealand cannot – the All Blacks’ 50,000-seat Eden Park would rank behind all but one of the eight stadiums used in Australia on stadium capacity alone.
So with the next tour, to New Zealand in 2029, the only one officially confirmed and signed off there is room to shift the calendar around in a few decades to incorporate the likes of Argentina and a series of pre-tour Tests with France, which have been widely touted. The tour to South Africa in 2033, too, is set to go ahead.
British and Irish Lions roster
But Australia should remain on the roster; it offers a brilliant experience against a host side who, even when they look close to rock bottom, can muster two Test performances which nearly produced the most unlikely of series results.
From Perth to Sydney and the seven matches in between, Australia delivered for the British and Irish Lions, and it looks as if the presence of the famous touring side has done the same for the Wallabies and wider national economy too.
I’ll remember that second Test at “the G”, as the locals call it, for a long time as one of those occasions that just reminds fans, chiefs and everyone in the sport that rugby can be – even for just 80 minutes – the very best sport in the world. It should be a lesson to the game.
Former England Sevens captain Ollie Phillips is the founder of Optimist Performance. Follow Ollie @OlliePhillips11
