DUBLIN — Andy Farrell said the British & Irish Lions must find solutions quickly after they slumped to a 28-24 defeat to Argentina in Dublin on Friday.
It was the Lions’ tour opener as they prepare to travel to Australia on Saturday for their 2025 series.
But, it was hardly the joyful sendoff they envisaged as the Lions made a catalogue of errors and got their tour off to a losing start. Farrell said post-match that Argentina looked hungrier than the Lions and was alarmed by the number of errors his side made.
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The Lions scored three tries — through Bundee Aki, a penalty try and Tadhg Beirne — but ended up falling to a masterclass from Tomas Albornoz. For Farrell, it illustrated how much work the Lions have to do as they look to win their first series since 2013.
“We made it a tough game didn’t we? Congratulations to Argentina and I’m sure that’s a big moment in their history,” Farrell told his post-match news conference.
“You can throw it all around and say we had plenty of opportunities but the whole story of the game is we made too many errors and we couldn’t put the pace on the game we wanted to.
“Some players will have done themselves proud and they’ll be hurting. Some people will be happy but others won’t and they’ll be dying for another chance. We’ll be learning a lot of lessons from that.”
It was the first time this group played together having met a fortnight ago, but Farrell said the Lions can have no excuses for their sloppy performance.
“We need to be better than that,” Farrell said. “It is what it is. We ask a lot of the players and maybe we put too much pressure on the side as it looked like we were disconnected at times.
“We’ll review what we said and we need to make sure we get something positive from that and it’s about how we move forward.”
Farrell was disappointed by the number of loose balls which ended up in Argentina hands.
“There’s a fight and hunger there we can’t accept,” he said. “We need to be honest. There are certain things we said we were going to do and we need to honour that and do it properly.
“Losing hurts, especially in this jersey. We need to find solutions quickly and be honest with ourselves. There has to be some good coming from this.”
Maro Itoje said the team will learn from this and said they will sort their wayward lineout.
“We weren’t accurate enough or consistent enough in piling pressure on Argentina,” Itoje said.
“We’re just finding our rhythm. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the lineout quite as smooth as we wanted today. We’ll learn the lessons.
“No excuses, we should’ve been more accurate today. We’ll learn and get better together.”
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Source: espn.com