McGeechan goes for blend of youth and experience

LIONS TEAM NEWS:IT WAS apposite that Lions team manager Gerald Davies read out the team to play the Royal XV tomorrow at Rustenburg because he will present those selected with their jerseys in a return to the traditional values that pepper Ian McGeechan's stewardship as coach.

For Ireland’s Tommy Bowe and Keith Earls there is the natural excitement that will accompany being handed the famous red jersey for the first time, while the ritual certainly won’t have lost its appeal in the eyes of Paul O’Connell and Ronan O’Gara.

The Irish quartet – Stephen Ferris is on the bench – joins seven Welshmen, three Englishman and lone Scot Mike Blair in a team charged with delivering the Lions first mission statement on the 2009 tour to South Africa. Eloquence will now be judged in terms of performance rather than the verbal posturing of previous weeks and months.

McGeechan’s selection is a blend of youth and experience, club combinations and potentially dynamic partnerships; none more so in the latter case than the midfield alliance of the 21-year-old Earls and his 22-year-old sidekick Jamie Roberts, a collaboration that the Lions coach said excited him.

The gifted young Munster centre has made a huge impression on the training ground and has been handed an early opportunity to translate that to the match arena.

“I didn’t think I’d even have an Irish cap at the end of this season. It was my first professional season and I was just hoping to get a few starts with Munster, but a couple of games went well in the Magners League and I got a few starts in the Heineken Cup. Not in a million years did I think I’d be on a Lions tour.”

McGeechan has thought carefully and cleverly about the composition of the backline, from his decision to go with the Ospreys back-three unit of Lee Byrne, Shane Williams and Bowe to installing O’Gara at outhalf.

The Irish playmaker is used to distributing to Earls at Munster and that innate understanding should help the young centre both settle and also get the type of possession he craves.

McGeechan will ask the physically robust Roberts to commit multiple tacklers and get his hands free to maximise the impact of the intelligent lines that Earls invariably runs. Blair’s all-round game at scrumhalf and fine service should provide the perfect foil for O’Gara.

Byrne needed game time after injury while Shane Williams would profit confidence-wise from scoring a try or two: the Rustenburg game seems to fit ideally. It’s interesting to note McGeechan’s fingerprints on a couple of man management issues up front.

The easier decision would have been to start English hooker Lee Mears, noted for his lineout accuracy but instead the Lions coach has plumped for Welshman Matthew Rees who is potentially more brittle in terms of his throwing.

McGeechan though has chosen to start Rees in the easiest game of the tour and given him the six-foot nine-inch Simon Shaw and one of the world’s best lineout operators in O’Connell at which to aim.

The Welsh hooker has plenty of other qualities, so if he is confident out of touch, he’ll be the Test contender that McGeechan would like.

The absence of Gethin Jenkins and Euan Murray from the selection equation and the possibility that Phil Vickery will captain the Wednesday team made the choice of Andrew Sheridan and Adam Jones straightforward.

Shaw joins O’Connell in the secondrow, a combination that ticks several boxes, not least physicality and under-rated handling in the case of the Englishman.

The same can be said of the backrow in which England flanker Joe Worsley’s thumping tackling and muscular defence should complement the scavenging and link play of Martyn Williams.

Wales’ Andy Powell requires match time after a disappointing Six Nations and a serious dose of splinters at club level in the latter part of the season that saw him begin too many games on the bench.

Perched alongside his fellow Cardiff backrow Martyn Williams in this match should see Powell get plenty of possession.

If he carries productively – he needs to be a little more subtle than head down, china shop charges – then it could energise his tour: once again McGeechan has chosen shrewdly in facilitating the Welshman being able to do so against what should be limited opposition by tour standards.

Even though the Scot did not say as much, the replacements tomorrow are almost certain, barring injury, to start next Wednesday’s second tour match against the Golden Lions.

The Leicester and Leinster contingent will be considered for selection at that point, which could see a midweek team captained by Brian O’Driscoll and containing six Irish players.

McGeechan’s preoccupation though is tomorrow’s match: “There’s enough experience around (in the team) to know what a Lions tour asks of you and how to put the game we want to on the field from day one. It is just looking at combinations which we want to do over the first six games.

“The players really do start to bring things out of each other; that’s where you get the special relationship building in a Lions jersey which is very important. You look at any Lions team early on, there is that period where it is really starting to establish itself, come together.

“From my point of view that is an exciting part . . . to wait for, to look for and to experience.”