England wing Tommy Freeman and Ireland prop Tadhg Furlong both said similar after being involved in last summer’s Lions tour of Australia.<\/p>\n
“Without realising it, I think I was tired,” Freeman said of his return to club side Northampton.<\/p>\n
“My body felt like I was OK to go and I was saying to coaches ‘Yeah I’m fine, I’m fine’. I just think mentally it was a bit more of a struggle.”<\/p>\n
Three-time Lion Furlong said: “Everything maybe seems insignificant the year after.”<\/p>\n
France’s players may not have that much sympathy. A campaign in their domestic top flight \u2013 the Top 14 \u2013 can stretch to 29 matches.<\/p>\n
The equivalent figure for the English Prem and the United Rugby Championship is 20 and 21 matches respectively.<\/p>\n
However, unlike with the Home Nations, France usually rest their top stars for their summer tours.<\/p>\n
While the Lions were touring Australia, across the Tasman Sea a France side took on New Zealand in a three-Test series without the likes of Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Matthieu Jalibert or Charles Ollivon.<\/p>\n
Despite objections from their Kiwi hosts, concerned about the impact on ticket sales, France stuck to their policy as a second-string side suffered a 3-0 series defeat.<\/p>\n
Ireland are adept at managing their stars’ overall workloads. For instance, Leinster and Ireland hooker Dan Sheehan has made only three starts for his province so far this season.<\/p>\n
But Warburton believes that not all games are equal. In his opinion, the Test stages demands more of players.<\/p>\n
“I think there’s something about playing international rugby \u2013 there’s only so many times I think you can play an international game of that magnitude, emotionally, in a year,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The Lions tour obviously eats into that quota and I think it’s a massive part of it.”<\/p>\n
The Six Nations’ regular calendar cycle might also play a part. In even-numbered years \u2013 in which every post-Lions Six Nations take place \u2013 France have three home games, rather than two.<\/p>\n
Their home matches include meetings with Ireland and England, often title rivals.<\/p>\n
France bookended their Six Nations campaign with victories against those two in Paris this year, crucial results in their championship success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England wing Tommy Freeman and Ireland prop Tadhg Furlong both said similar after being involved in last summer’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-478842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}