Picking your Lions

A long established maxim in newspapers is that when the end of the year looms, or more specifically the period between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, when news is thin on the ground, it is time to bamboozle readers with reviews of the year. It is formulaic to a large extent and relies on readers being nostalgic towards the 12 months just passed, or perhaps just suffering from mild amnesia.

An alternative to the endless reviews is to look forward to the coming 12 months. When broken down into specific sports, it can lead to a preoccupation with a single event. One website and two Sunday newspapers devoted a great deal of space to the Lions' tour of Australia next summer.

The website, www.bbc.co.uk/rugby decided to get its rugby correspondent to pick a Lions Test team for next summer and then sit back and watch the comments pour in as the punter was invited to register his own team, via e-mail. A decent number (about 10) of the respondents were of Irish origin but the majority of 42 that this column scanned were from England, Wales and Scotland. It would be expected that e-mails emanating from Ireland would have an Irish bias. It was more interesting, though, to see how our Celtic and English cousins felt.

From an Irish perspective, the names of hooker Keith Wood and centre Brian O'Driscoll featured in all responses but the most one-eyed supporter. But perhaps of greater interest is that St Mary's wing Denis Hickie was very popular among Welsh supporters and along with Malcolm O'Kelly received healthy support. It's revealing that most of the Irish respondents included Peter Clohessy while his name wasn't mentioned by any other nationality.

An Irish Sunday newspaper carried an interesting interview with Lions coach Graham Henry while an English counterpart devoted a page, indulging its rugby correspondent and his thought process with regard to the forthcoming tour. For the record he picked 16 Englishmen, 13 Welshmen, three Irish and three Scots, decrying any bias.

Before one stops laughing, Planet Rugby felt that in the interest of research, we would offer this column's readers the opportunity to send in via e-mail, a Lions Test XV for Australia. The five best/funniest/most worthy/one eyed will be published in this column next week.