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Australia’s head coach, Joe Schmidt, has criticized the British and Irish Lions for selecting a center partnership featuring Bundee Aki and Sione Tuipulotu ahead of their inaugural tour match.
Lions manager Andy Farrell has announced his lineup for Friday’s opening summer match against Argentina, which includes four foreign-born players in the starting 15 and another two on the bench.
Schmidt is set to face the Lions with his team later in the summer, starting with the first Test in July and concluding the tour in early August.
The subject has been a source of controversy since Farrell named his 38-man squad, with Lions icon Willie John McBride saying the inclusions ‘bothered’ him, while former England scrum-half Danny Care agreed that the inclusion of foreign-born players was an eyebrow-raiser.
And Schmidt has now marked himself as the leader of the criticism, highlighting the duo when he named his Australia squad on Thursday.
Australia head coach Joe Schmidt has taken aim at the Lions’ foreign-born centre duo
Bundee Aki (left) and Sione Tuipulotu (right) will start in the centre together against Argentina, but were born in New Zealand and Australia respectively
Lions boss Andy Farrell has named four foreign-born players included in his 15 and two more in the replacements
‘A southern-hemisphere centre partnership that will be pretty formidable,’ he said. ‘Obviously, I coached Bundee for several years (at Ireland) and know him really well, respect him massively as a player and a great contributor to the team environment.
‘I’ve only had glancing conversations with Sione but again, by all accounts a champion bloke. You don’t get to be captain of a national team without being a great bloke and really professional in those high-performance environments.
‘They are real athletes, those two together, so that’ll be really interesting.’
Lions back coach Richard Wigglesworth, however, jumped to his side’s defence, insisting players aren’t picked on their backgrounds, but commitment and talent.
‘I don’t know if they are questioning their commitment,’ he said. ‘Their journey and how committed they have been to their country, whether that be Scotland or Ireland, England or Wales, everyone has earned the right to pull on the Lions jersey.
‘They are, to a man, incredibly proud to be here. It is not your background or how you have got here, it is what sort of player are you and what sort of man you are and we have got great men and great players.’
Care had said on the BBC Rugby Union Weekly podcast: ‘Both your starting wingers are going to be lads that never, ever once in their childhood or even their mid-20s dreamt of wearing a red Lions jersey.
‘It is what it is, it’s the rules, and why not. If you’re James Lowe or you’re Duhan van der Merwe or you’re [Jamison] Gibson-Park, you go, “Oh, I’ll play for the Lions, yeah”.
Former England star Danny Care raised questions, suggesting players would have ‘never dreamt’ of playing for the Lions
It’s not uncommon for players to represent countries other than their birth – England football defender Marc Guehi (right) was born in the Ivory Coast
‘We’re not going to change it, but it just doesn’t… I think there’s a lot of people that feel the same but can’t say it.’
It’s not uncommon in sport for starts to feature for countries they weren’t born in at international level, but qualify for through family links or how long they have lived there.
That includes in the sports such as football, with the likes of Marc Guehi (Ivory Coast) and Trevoh Chalobah (Sierra Leone) in the current England set-up born elsewhere, while cricket greats such as Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen were born in South Africa but represented England.
