Carling on the Lions set-up

...This raft of reinforcements has just highlighted the flaws in the thinking surrounding this tour. Gatland has made the decision on logical, hard-nosed thinking, believing that players already in the time zone will be more effective than players flying in from the UK or other time zones who will require far longer to get up to speed.

Hard-nosed, logical thinking that gives the players the greatest chance of succeeding, which I completely agree with, and yet the very same thinking and approach that was not adhered to at the start of the tour, or the planning of the tour, or seemingly the focus of the tour...

...If the point of the Lions existence is to win, then so much must change. If the point of the Lions existence is to make money, then they will not exist for too much longer. At the moment, the tour falls between the two worlds of old school amateurism and current professional thinking. The basic building blocks of the tour are accepted and run by amateur thinking, whilst the professional coaches then try to salvage the best results from it...