{"id":547780,"date":"2026-04-24T06:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547780\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T06:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:19:09","slug":"do-not-water-down-the-prestige-of-the-lions-with-new-tours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/547780\/","title":{"rendered":"Do not water down the prestige of the Lions with new tours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waugh and RA still face major challenges in enabling rugby union to flourish again in the face of seemingly ever-increasing competition from the NRL (rugby league) and AFL (Australian rules), the more popular football codes in Australia, but the strong financial footing gives them at least a fighting chance. It also underscores the massive importance of the Lions on the rugby economies of the southern hemisphere big three of Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

This comes to mind following the news that the Lions have invited proposals<\/a> for sports agencies to reset the host allocation model from the current rotation of touring one of the big three every four years, to include a fourth tour involving the other core markets of France, Japan or the Americas.<\/p>\n

The existing model has been in place since 1989, when Australia hosted its first standalone tour for 90 years. While the Lions are right to explore the commercial possibilities of tweaks to the schedule, they should exercise caution when considering moving to a 16-year rotation.<\/p>\n

The whole lure of the Lions is its history, rarity and concept of bringing the best of the four home nations to battle against the best in the southern hemisphere. It is a wonderful but fragile mystique. That is not to say that change is not necessary to future-proof the concept.<\/p>\n

Innovations such as staging pre-tour matches in the UK and Ireland upset traditionalists, but anyone who was in Dublin last June to see the game against Argentina would have appreciated what a special night it was. So too the 90,000 who were present at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch Andy Farrell\u2019s side clinch the series against Australia in a stunning second Test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waugh and RA still face major challenges in enabling rugby union to flourish again in the face of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3481,5337,5903,23451,8631,217,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-547780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-british-and-irish-lions","9":"tag-comment","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-rugby-union","12":"tag-rugby-world-cup","13":"tag-sport","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547780","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=547780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}