British and Irish Lions forward Ollie Chessum has revealed what he found to be “the worst bit” of their recent tour to Australia.
The squad led by Andy Farrell won the Test series 2-1, and England lock Chessum played a part in all three matches.
There were appearances off the bench in games one and three in Brisbane and Sydney, and a start in the engine room with Maro Itoje in the second match in Melbourne. It was at MCG when the Lions clinched the series victory with a match to spare, Hugo Keenan’s late try securing the tourists a 29-26 victory.
The celebrations after that victory were branded as “chaotic” by Chessum, but he was disappointed with what unfolded the following weekend in Sydney. It wasn’t the Lions losing 14-22 that annoyed him most; it was the lack of mingling between the teams after the series finale, which struck him as odd.
Appearing on For The Love Of Rugby, Chessum said: “Do you know what – and Geoff (Parling, the Wallabies assistant who is now Leicester head coach) pointed this out, this is probably the worst bit about it, we finished the third match and the teams didn’t really mingle.
“We sort of kept ourselves to ourselves…”
“Geoff came into the Lions changing room and had a pint. The thing is, our season finished there but for those (Australian) boys, they had to go again. So it was a bit different for them, but you would have just thought there would have been a bit more of a mix in.
“Like, I saw (ex-Leicester teammate) Harry Potter after the first Test and swapped shirts, but I thought there would be a bit more of that after the third Test and there wasn’t really. We sort of kept ourselves to ourselves and so did the Wallabies boys.”
What Chessum had to say struck a chord with two-time Lions tourist Anthony Watson, who was co-hosting the show with Ben Youngs. “That might be the one time I actually advocate one of those post-match dinners is after the last Test for the Lions. Any other time categorically no.”
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Back to Chessum, who added about the series clincher in Melbourne: “It was so good, unreal. Absolute chaos. But won a series, so can’t complain. The flight from Melbourne to Sydney was chaos. Everyone was ropey. Literally off the plane, onto a bus, straight to the bar.”
His victory with the Lions was a career highlight. “It’s hard (to quantify it). Winning something with Leicester, you know that’s unreal. Then you have this dream of playing for your country, and I never ever thought the Lions would be a thing, but it has to go top really. It’s once every four years.
“It’s luck really, you have to be on form, have to be fit to go those tours. There have been players throughout the history of the game who have never been on a Lions tour, so to have gone there and won one, it has to go near the top, if not top.”
Chessum is now back at Leicester, where Parling has now taken over as the boss from Michael Cheika following a 2024/25 campaign that ended with a Premiership final defeat to Bath at Twickenham.
The England forward is enjoying the change. “It has been class,” he vouched. “It’s weird when you come in and there is a new coach.
“I rocked up to a social a couple of weeks ago, a team get-together in a pub, I walked in and I felt like a new kid, there were so many new faces, so many new staff members. But that’s the challenge: how quickly can we get back to where we were?
“Geoff has been brilliant; the coaches have been brilliant and it’s weird. They put a stat up the other day where the average age of our squad now is 24. I’ve turned 25, so I am older than the average age of the squad.”
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Leicester are one win from three ahead of next Saturday’s visit by champions – and current leaders – Bath to Welford Road. Despite the results not being where the Tigers want them yet, Chessum is loving the new Parling era at the club.
“I feel like Geoff is not too far detached from what the club is about,” he said. “He was only a player there like 10 years ago, so he knows what the club is about. He has been really good to get to know.
“The way he works, the way he operates is a bit different from other coaches, but that’s the beauty of it – you get to learn different things from different people. I have loved being back.”