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21st June 2025
04:28pm BST
Argentina came to play in Dublin last night, beating the Lions 28-24, with an array of clinical attacking passages lighting up the Aviva Stadium.
The Lions were, however, extremely dominant in an area of the game that more often than not, leads to victory.
At the scrum, props Ellis Genge and Finlay Bealham made mince meat of their opposite numbers, with help from fellow font-five men, Luke Cowan-Dickie, Maro Itoje, and Tadhg Beirne.
While the backrow do add push in the scrum, their influence in minuscule compared to the others.
However, it was pointed out that blindside flanker, Tom Curry, was doing his best to get involved, and illegally at that.
Pushing up from his position at the side and back of the set-piece, the Englishman was using his head to bore in on the Argentinian loosehead prop.
Not only is it an illegal act, it is dangerous as well, and something that Curry has been guilty of with England, Sale, and on the last Lions tour against South Africa.
After the game, head coach Andy Farrell was less than pleased with his side's performance.
He said: "We made it a tough game, didn't we?
"You can try and throw it all around and say we had plenty of opportunities, and we should have done better to convert that, but the whole story of the game is that we compounded too many errors.
"In the end, we weren't able to put the pace on the game because of that.
"You can single out one thing, but it’s not just one thing, it’s a compounding of quite a few bits.
"The amount of balls that we threw blindly, either to the opposition or the floor, is probably a stand-out.
"If you combine that with the kicking game and the aerial battle, and what is disappointing is scraps on the floor from that type of battle, it always seemed to go to Argentina, so there’s a bit of fight and hunger from them that we can’t accept.
"Then you combine stuff at the breakdown, the lineout or whatever, and it’s too much. It’s too much when it all comes together, it’s just compounded, and there’s a reason why people do get cramp or look a bit tired or are not able to capitalise on opportunities you have created, because probably subconsciously you’re suppressing yourself with the compounding of errors. It obviously needs to be addressed."
