Latest news with #SioneTuipulotu
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Sport
- Irish Times
Lions v Argentina player ratings: Bundee Aki shows his strength, Fin Smith has a shaky start
Marcus Smith: Scrambled well for a kicked through ball at the end of the first half but wasn't always solid under the high kicks. Caught out of position and didn't read the threat when Santiago Cordero scored his second-half try. 5 Tommy Freeman: Kept busy coming in from the wing and hungry for work from the beginning. Some clever running lines too. Picked it up in the second half and showed what a real live wire he can be at this level. 7 Sione Tuipulotu: Showed his strength going forward for his disallowed try and was always a threat going forward in the carry. Some handling errors and scrappy offloads and an excellent try saving tackle at the end of the first half. 6 Bundee Aki: He was selected for his strength and ability to gain yards in traffic. His first half try was just that as he muscled over with three players around him. Gave way for Elliot Daly in the second half. 6 READ MORE Duhan van der Merwe: He was a mixed bag in the first half, hitting rucks and a great one-handed pass to Tommy Freeman early on. Was an early threat but was turned over going forward for the Albornoz try before half-time. 5 Fin Smith: Shaky start with a few missed high balls but grew into a game that was frantic at times and also disconnected. A busy player but perhaps not as controlling and influential as he would have liked. 5 Alex Mitchell: Provided a good service after box kicking at the beginning which wasn't always profitable. A super one-handed defensive pass to Freeman. Seemed rushed at times moving the ball forward. Replaced after half-time by Williams. 5 Alex Mitchell seemed rushed at times moving the ball forward. Photograph:Ellis Genge: Crushed a few scrums in the first half where the Lions earned three penalties. Good energy too from the loose head prop who trucked some hard yards before giving way to Schoeman after an hour. 6 Luke Cowan-Dickie: Showed great strength for his disallowed try in the first half. Was very active around the park with a few missed lineout throws. Showed good energy while he was on before Ronan Kelleher replaced him early in the second half. 6 Finlay Bealham: Was solid in the scrums and involved around the pitch in a frantic first half. Showed himself to be valuable around the park and in the set piece. Will be pleased with his 59 minutes before Tadhg Furlong came in. 6 Maro Itoje: Quiet enough first half and himself and Cowan Dickie didn't quite get the lineout timing early in the match. Controlled the lineout maul well for the Lions penalty try early in the second half. 5 Tadhg Beirne ran a great line for his try in the first half. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho Tadhg Beirne: Never afraid of the grunt work and ran a great line for his try in the first half, taking the ball from a hard flat pass by replacement Tomos Williams. Great lineout take at the end but Lions just off their game to capitalise. 6 Tom Curry: One of the players that showed from the beginning taking up the ball and hitting back Argentina players. Took a few lineouts too. Turned up on the day but a disjointed overall performance negated some of his work. 7 Jac Morgan: Got involved in everything early in the game and won an important runover in the first half that could have been a try. Probably didn't show as much as he is capable of in a frustrating first half. Replaced by Henry Pollo ck 49 minutes in. 6 Ben Earl: Took early carries and showed visibility throughout the first half. He was one of the more solid Lions performers, taking the ball on and curbing the errors that had frustrated Lions efforts. 7 [ Lions left to rue missed chances as Argentina win in Dublin Opens in new window ] Andy Farrell: Spoke about connections during the week and the difficulty of glueing a team together that had not much time to work out each other's way of playing. That disconnect was on show, especially in a frustrating first half. 6 Replacements: Several players made an impact when they came on including Tomos Williams and Mack Hansen who took the ball on several times. Ultimately they didn't get it over the line with plenty of late possession and territory. 6 Which Ireland players will step up for the summer squad while the Lions are away? Listen | 27:53
Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Fans live their best lives as Lions lose out on historic Dublin opener
Go ahead, scoff. Plenty will. 'The British and Irish Lions'. The very phrase tends to get up the nose of a sizeable portion of the population. Some of them are even embedded in rugby's everyday community. But this felt like an … event. It just hit differently. Call them an anachronism, or a corporate machine, but you can't fake a sense of occasion. There was something quirky and inherently giddy about the sight of Baggot Street and Beggar's Bush awash with that famous sea of red. And with the subsequent colonisation of the three-tiered verdant spread of seats inside the stadium itself. Here, in Dublin, was the canvas we had seen projected on our screens so many times down the years when so many thousands of travelling fans from these islands have laid claim to vast chunks of Loftus Versfeld, Eden Park or Suncorp Stadium. Friday night's game against Argentina marked the first time the famous touring team had ever played a game on Irish soil. It's a rare enough treat across the Irish Sea, too. This was just the third sighting hereabouts since before the haunted trip to New Zealand in 2005. Word, and modern ticketing systems, had it that over half of those in the full house of 51,700 had bought their way in from outside of Ireland. Proof of it was in the smattering of kilts and leeks and in the smorgasbord of accents that abounded in D4. One guy was dressed wig to toe in a kit from the tourists' 1970s heyday, his movements as he skipped up the steps with his tray of beer not exactly prompting the iconic images of a JPR or a JJ in full flight, but we'll forgive him that. Pints. Sunshine. The Lions. People here were living their best lives. Jeer if you must, but there is something to be said for groups from the Welsh Valleys, Middle England, the Scottish Borders and Ireland north and south having the craic together like this. It shouldn't work? You're right, but it does. What of it? One discordant note caught the ear when a group of lads, decked in uniform Lions jerseys, approached a hat and scarf stall on the corner of Raglan Road and Elgin Road. 'Irish hats please,' one of them said, 'everyone thinks we're English.' The warm-up, so often a scene of minor interest, was in itself a means of familiarisation with a cool tableaux: Bundee Aki and Sione Tuipulotu running practice lines on one side, Maro Itoje and Tadhg Beirne engaging in a second row clinch for a simulated scrum. Fantasy rugby, but for real. It was Beirne, Munster's finest, who plucked the kick-off from the warm city air just after eight o'clock and it was met by a guttural roar, a release, that put you in the mind of the opening race at Cheltenham or midnight on New Year's Eve. What followed was a deathly hush. An emotional peak and pitch had been achieved and there was nowhere else to go in that moment but back to zero. Or maybe it was a combination of the sweltering weather and the hours so many had spent in the city's bars. There was plenty of stop-start, some caused by spills, others by TMO checks or HIA calls. But that was to be expected given the ad hoc DNA that is in the Lions and a Pumas team that was playing as a collective for the first time in seven months. Sprinkled around all that was some real quality. Both teams showed some exhilarating skills with ball in hand. Bundee Aki's opening try for the Lions followed a dizzying game of hot potato in contact with Luke Cowan-Dickie, Marcus Smith, Sione Tuipulotu and Fin Smith all fingertipping the pill on. Argentina saw that and raised it with two sumptuous tries, both of them on the break. Tomas Albornoz and Santiago Cordero claimed the points in question but to focus on the finishes would be like gushing over the frame that holds the Mona Lisa. The Wallabies have shown signs of rebirth under Joe Schmidt in the last year but concerns remain over the quality of challenges available to the Lions before the Test series. So maybe being 21-10 down here at the break, and then 28-24, was no bad thing. Losing 24-28? Not so great, but hardly disastrous either. There was one genuinely lovely moment approaching the 74th minute when Owen Farrell, son of Lions head coach Andy and a man was felt hounded out of international rugby by persistent abuse, popped up on the big screen and got one of the night's biggest cheers. One of England's finest, loaded with love by a Dublin crowd. Quite the night.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Lions handed wake-up call as Argentina hang on to edge thrilling win in Dublin
The 2025 British and Irish Lions tour is up and running but here was a reminder that not everything can be minutely choreographed. This was anything but a comfortable evening for the coaches and players who were given a serious work-out prior to climbing on board the plane to Perth this weekend and embarking on their eagerly awaited Australian tour. Should they win the Test series 3-0, of course, this pre-departure wake-up call will rate as only a minor footnote in the great scheme of things. The Wallabies, nevertheless, will have taken due note of the positive manner with which Argentina approached the contest. The Pumas, despite the absence of some first-choice players, led by 11 points at half-time and battled heroically right to the end. Advertisement Related: British & Irish Lions v Argentina: rugby union – live Maybe, one day, the Lions will find it in their hearts – and wallets – to agree to a full tour of South America which, on this evidence, would be a guaranteed crowd pleaser. As for the Lions, playing in Ireland for the first time, it is too early to draw hard and fast individual conclusions but Tadhg Beirne and Sione Tuipulotu both had influential games and the two starting props Ellis Genge and Finlay Bealham initially gave their opposite numbers a notably tough time in the set scrums. It was also a more than decent occasion which further underlined the power of one of rugby's most evocative brands. Even Munster fans would have been impressed by the sea of red jerseys all around the Aviva Stadium and, despite some punchy ticket prices, the attendance was a 51,700 sellout. Everyone had been keenly aware all week that pre-departure games can be a mixed blessing. Four years ago, Alun Wyn Jones was ruled out of the early stages of the tour after damaging a shoulder against Japan at Murrayfield and the unsettling possibility of being sidelined before the plane south has left the runway inevitably hung in the humid evening air. Advertisement Admittedly it was nowhere near as sultry as it was in Hong Kong in 2013 when Warren Gatland's Lions were greeted by almost unplayable conditions, with temperatures of 31C and humidity nudging 90%. The other big difference was the calibre of the opposition. The Pumas were not absolutely at full strength but whenever Pablo Matera, Juan Martín González and Julián Montoya take the field they are never less than fully committed. It required the Lions to be 'on it' from the outset because the pace of the game was nothing like a gentle friendly. Luke Cowan-Dickie came close to an opening try only to lose control of the ball in the act of scoring and, after Tomas Albornoz and Fin Smith had swapped penalties apiece, it was the Pumas who seized the initiative thanks to a nicely taken 11th-minute try by their speedy left wing Ignacio Mendy. The Lions also had a second potential score by Tuipulotu correctly ruled out for a prior knock-on by Alex Mitchell but their cohesion was steadily improving, helped by the established England half-back pairing of Mitchell and Fin Smith. Both were involved along with Marcus Smith in keeping a promising move alive before the physical Bundee Aki took the most direct available route to the try-line. Also noticeable was the collective sense of purpose; no Lions team can afford to be a team full of look-at-me individuals. These are clearly early days but Tuipulotu looks to be the kind of player any centre would love to play alongside and the calmly assured Fin Smith also looked at ease in the same red jersey worn by his grandfather, Tom Elliot, on the 1955 tour to South Africa. Advertisement The scrum was also a positive area, in contrast to an initially misfiring lineout. There was also no doubting the heft of some of the Lions' defensive tackling, an area in which this squad have the potential to excel, but the odd little error was undermining their prospects. On the stroke of half-time Duhan van der Merwe, desperate to impress, lost the ball 15 metres from the line and the Pumas took gleeful advantage, Santiago Carreras releasing Albornoz for a swallow dive score at the other end. The 21-10 interval scoreline demanded a swift response, which duly materialised within five minutes of the restart. The Lions opted to trust their driving maul with the line in sight and a concerted surge gave the opposing pack little option but to drag it down, costing them a penalty try and 10 minutes in the sin bin for Mayco Vivas. The raft of Lions subs also brought fresh energy and, soon enough, they were back ahead. Genge came charging through the middle in proper rhino fashion and, eventually, Beirne added the finishing gloss. The Pumas, though, also found a second wind and another daring counterattack from deep in their own half yielded their third try of the night courtesy of the pacy Santiago Cordero. If the Australian leg of the tour is equally full of thrills and spills, the next few weeks will be excellent viewing.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
Lions handed wake-up call as Argentina hang on to edge thrilling win in Dublin
The 2025 British and Irish Lions tour is up and running but here was a reminder that not everything can be minutely choreographed. This was anything but a comfortable evening for the coaches and players who were given a serious work-out prior to climbing on board the plane to Perth this weekend and embarking on their eagerly awaited Australian tour. Should they win the Test series 3-0, of course, this pre-departure wake-up call will rate as only a minor footnote in the great scheme of things. The Wallabies, nevertheless, will have taken due note of the positive manner with which Argentina approached the contest. The Pumas, despite the absence of some first-choice players, led by 11 points at half-time and battled heroically right to the end. Maybe, one day, the Lions will find it in their hearts – and wallets – to agree to a full tour of South America which, on this evidence, would be a guaranteed crowd pleaser. As for the Lions, playing in Ireland for the first time, it is too early to draw hard and fast individual conclusions but Tadhg Beirne and Sione Tuipulotu both had influential games and the two starting props Ellis Genge and Finlay Bealham initially gave their opposite numbers a notably tough time in the set scrums. It was also a more than decent occasion which further underlined the power of one of rugby's most evocative brands. Even Munster fans would have been impressed by the sea of red jerseys all around the Aviva Stadium and, despite some punchy ticket prices, the attendance was a 51,700 sellout. Everyone had been keenly aware all week that pre-departure games can be a mixed blessing. Four years ago, Alun Wyn Jones was ruled out of the early stages of the tour after damaging a shoulder against Japan at Murrayfield and the unsettling possibility of being sidelined before the plane south has left the runway inevitably hung in the humid evening air. Admittedly it was nowhere near as sultry as it was in Hong Kong in 2013 when Warren Gatland's Lions were greeted by almost unplayable conditions, with temperatures of 31C and humidity nudging 90%. The other big difference was the calibre of the opposition. The Pumas were not absolutely at full strength but whenever Pablo Matera, Juan Martín González and Julián Montoya take the field they are never less than fully committed. It required the Lions to be 'on it' from the outset because the pace of the game was nothing like a gentle friendly. Luke Cowan-Dickie came close to an opening try only to lose control of the ball in the act of scoring and, after Tomas Albornoz and Fin Smith had swapped penalties apiece, it was the Pumas who seized the initiative thanks to a nicely taken 11th-minute try by their speedy left wing Ignacio Mendy. The Lions also had a second potential score by Tuipulotu correctly ruled out for a prior knock-on by Alex Mitchell but their cohesion was steadily improving, helped by the established England half-back pairing of Mitchell and Fin Smith. Both were involved along with Marcus Smith in keeping a promising move alive before the physical Bundee Aki took the most direct available route to the try-line. Also noticeable was the collective sense of purpose; no Lions team can afford to be a team full of look-at-me individuals. These are clearly early days but Tuipulotu looks to be the kind of player any centre would love to play alongside and the calmly assured Fin Smith also looked at ease in the same red jersey worn by his grandfather, Tom Elliot, on the 1955 tour to South Africa. The scrum was also a positive area, in contrast to an initially misfiring lineout. There was also no doubting the heft of some of the Lions' defensive tackling, an area in which this squad have the potential to excel, but the odd little error was undermining their prospects. On the stroke of half-time Duhan van der Merwe, desperate to impress, lost the ball 15 metres from the line and the Pumas took gleeful advantage, Santiago Carreras releasing Albornoz for a swallow dive score at the other end. Sign up to The Breakdown The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week's action reviewed after newsletter promotion The 21-10 interval scoreline demanded a swift response, which duly materialised within five minutes of the restart. The Lions opted to trust their driving maul with the line in sight and a concerted surge gave the opposing pack little option but to drag it down, costing them a penalty try and 10 minutes in the sin bin for Mayco Vivas. The raft of Lions subs also brought fresh energy and, soon enough, they were back ahead. Genge came charging through the middle in proper rhino fashion and, eventually, Beirne added the finishing gloss. The Pumas, though, also found a second wind and another daring counterattack from deep in their own half yielded their third try of the night courtesy of the pacy Santiago Cordero. If the Australian leg of the tour is equally full of thrills and spills, the next few weeks will be excellent viewing.
Daily Mail
15 hours ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Australia coach takes aim at Lions duo - born in New Zealand and Australia - after former stars raised questions over their inclusions
Australia head coach Joe Schmidt has taken aim at the British and Irish Lions for their centre partnership of of Bundee Aki and Sione Tuipulotu ahead of the side's first tour game. Lions boss Andy Farrell has named his stating side for the first of the summer matches against Argentina on Friday, with four foreign-born players included in the 15 and two more in the replacements. Schmidt will lead his side against the Lions later on this summer, with the first Test to be played in July before the tour concludes in early August. The 59-year-old has named his own squad to take on Fiji, and wasted no time taking aim at a duo who were born in New Zealand and Australia respectively. 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. '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". '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.
