There are some mad f**king ******** here. Cian Healy? Tomas O'Leary? Leo Cullen? Tavis Knoyle?
Is this if you picked the Lions team now, or trying to guess for 2011? Because there's plenty of bolting potential out there. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if one of the current U20 crop of fly-halves was on the plane to Australia. Chris Robshaw completely deserves to be mentioned in what will be an absurdly competitive fight for back-row. I think one of the full-backs going will be a bolter, a lot of established names struggling for form.
Right now, the Lions will be picked something like this...
Takes the Wales and England front rows. Drop the prop you like the least.
Courtney Lawes, Richie Grey and Bradley Davies. Hard ******* lines on POC/Palmer et al
Back-row you could argue endlessly and depends largely on how distinguishes themselves that year. Right now, ignoring fitness, I'd take Ferris, Wood and... hmm... Beattie. The only back-row starting at the moment who don't deserve to be a Lion are Powell.
Ben Youngs will be 9. There is a yawning, embarassing chasm between him and every other scrum-half in the British Isles right now, even on his off days. Probably Reddan. Jesus.
Flood at 10. I'd probably use Hook on the bench, as whoever is covering fly-half isn't coming on there save in extremis.
Centre partnership is embarassing. Uhm... uhm... seriously. Thank gods that in two years time it will be Luke Marshall and Manu Tuilagi.
Wings, Ashton and Bowe. Quite hard on Shane, but he'll be dead by then anyway.
15, Foden. Earls probably covering on the bench as he has a knack of scoring tries as a sub, is a decent impact player and covers a lot of positions.
But yeah. 2 years is a long way away. Which is unfortunate, as Australia might find a few more decent forwards in that time.
