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12th May 2021
06:25pm BST

"There's so many solid back-rowers in all the home nations - the class of player is so good. There's another six players you could have easily taken on tour, and nobody would have argued. "It was always going to be tough, and me being selected last [in alphabetical order], halfway through, I was thinking, 'Oh no!'"Watson jokes that he was at home with his wife and two daughters, who were fighting over a bag of crisps, when the squad was announced on live TV. After missing out on the 2017 tour and badly injuring his knee in the first game [against Ireland] at the 2019 World Cup, he was taking nothing for granted. With a bonafide Scottish rugby star on the show, host Lee McKenzie and Alex Goode took the opportunity to make their fellow House of Rugby regular Sean O'Brien uncomfortable. The former Ireland and Lions flanker had argued, last week, that the Lions squad was shy of around three quality Irish players. With the likes of Duhan van der Merwe and Chris Harris getting in ahead of Keith Earls and Garry Ringrose, Goode could not help himself.
GOODE: Yeah, you said if Andy Farrell was there, there'd be 20 Irishmen. O'BRIEN: Hold on a second! Who did I put down, Lee McKenzie? MCKENZIE: You said if it was a 50/50, and there were Scottish coaches, they'd be obviously able to sway... O'BRIEN: They'd be obviously be able to pick the players that they know are going to deliver, and fit the systems that they'd have. There's only one Scot that I questioned, and that was van der Merwe, just because of the exclusion of Jonny May. The rest of them are there because they are good enough to be there.Goode was not letting him away with it that easily, though. Reminded by Goode that he had argued for Ringrose and Ryan's inclusions, O'Brien stuck by his guns. "So you are saying that Chris Harris shouldn't be there?!" the England star prodded. "I was giving my opinion that Ringrose or Henry Slade should be there," O'Brien responded, "because of their ability to generate something out of nothing. But that's just my opinion." [caption id="attachment_227921" align="aligncenter" width="1280"]
Hamish Watson was named Six Nations Player of the Championship for 2021. (Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile)[/caption]
The only seed of doubt regarding Watson's Lions inclusion came when some pundits and rugby correspondents said Watson - 6-foot-1 and a shade over 16-stone - would be too lightweight to cause the Springboks trouble.
While O'Brien had sage advice for him on that - "Whenever anyone would ask, I'd add an inch and that would stop the conversation" - Watson was taking it in his stride.
"I'm not actually that small. But it's funny - once people get a perception of that, it's there. It's not even worth worrying about... I think my profile on Wikipedia has an extra few inches on it. I'm probably a bit shorter than people think I am!"
WATCH THAT EPISODE HERE:
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