English pundit lays into Irish players for ’embarrassing’ play in Lions win

He did not hold back!

While the Lions were comfortable winners on Saturday, beating the Western Force 54-7, there was a particular element of their game that was not up to scratch.

They struggled hugely with the Australian side's restarts, which gave them field position and put the Lions under massive pressure straight after their scores, and directly led to their only try of the game.

The man who got the most stick for these mishaps was lock Scott Cummings, who failed to gather a handful of kick-offs.

While at least one of these was purely down to poor handling by the Scot, his pod of lifters have to shoulder a portion of the blame.

Writing in The Times, English pundit, Stuart Barnes, called out Tadhg Furlong and Dan Sheehan for their part in the fiasco.

He said: "However McCarthy’s mate, Scott Cummings, in tandem with Tadhg Furlong and Dan Sheehan, was lost in space at every restart. The timing of the Lions restart reception was embarrassing. Twice the Scottish lock missed the ball completely, once he failed to control the catch.

"The Lions didn’t win one of their first six restarts. That is why a team finds itself under territorial pressure when it should have been racking up the points. In a Test series, such profligacy will be more costly than it was in this mismatch.

"Quite why the Lions didn’t change personnel within this particular three-man pod is mystifying. One would hope that Maro Itoje will address the issue. Indeed, one would think the Lions captain would be in control of the kicks in a way that Cummings and his replacement skipper, Sheehan, were not."