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Will Greenwood Picks More England Players Than Ireland In 37-Man Lions Squad

Will Greenwood Picks More England Players Than Ireland In 37-Man Lions Squad
Eoin Harrington
By Eoin Harrington Updated
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Ireland looked back to their best in Saturday's win over England, getting their Six Nations defence off to a near-perfect start.

Interim head coach Simon Easterby took charge of the team for the first time in the absence of Andy Farrell, who will spend the coming months preparing his Lions squad to tour Australia this summer.

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With back-to-back Six Nations crowns under their belt (and, we hope, a third to come), Ireland have been widely tipped to dominate the selections for the squad.

Caelan Doris is the bookies' favourite to captain the Lions down under, while there could be up to half a dozen more Irish players involved in the matchday 23 for the Australia tests.

If this were soccer and Irish involvement could be explained in a manner akin to expected goals (expected Irish?), that number would certainly have climbed after Saturday's impressive win against England.

Despite this, England legend Will Greenwood's predicted squad after the opening weekend of the Six Nations had some bizarre exclusions of Ireland players - and a curious bias towards his own underperforming country.

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Will Greenwood makes very questionable Lions squad prediction after Ireland's big win v England

Ireland team

1 February 2025; Bundee Aki of Ireland scores his side's second try despite the attempted tackle by Tommy Freeman of England during the Guinness Six Nations Rugby Championship match between Ireland and England at Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Writing in the Telegraph after the opening weekend of the Six Nations, Will Greenwood selected his 37-man Lions squad for this summer's tour of Australia.

Bizarrely, Greenwood included more English players (13) and Scottish players (12) than Irish (11), despite Ireland chasing a third consecutive Six Nations title this year.

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Some of the exclusions were hard to explain. Greenwood chose five players from the back three, with none of them Irish, even after James Lowe's immense performance in victory against England on Saturday. Two of those selected were English, yet there was no room for Lowe, Hugo Keenan or Mack Hansen, all of whom will hold reasonable hope of taking a seat on the plane.

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There was no room for Bundee Aki either (though Greenwood did admittedly choose both Robbie Henshaw and Garry Ringrose), while Greenwood picked two England fly-halves among his three. It may well come to pass that neither Jack Crowley nor Sam Prendergast travel to Australia but it seems unlikely that both English 10s will get the nod ahead of the Ireland duo.

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The selection has evidently taken the opening weekend of the Six Nations into account, with Dan Sheehan's excellence off the bench commended. Despite this, Greenwood also suggests that the superb Jamison Gibson-Park could be usurped at scrum-half by Wales youngster Tomos Williams (the only Welsh pick in his squad).

To round things off, Greenwood's wildcard pick Gabriel Ibitoye (another England player) is uncapped at test level.

There is a long way to go until the Lions squad is named but it would be a massive surprise to see Ireland usurped by England and Scotland for numbers in the group travelling to Australia.

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