Do the Lions call ups prove the tours don’t work any more?
The Ruck
Reynolds Alfie
3.4 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's the week of the first test between the Wallabies and the British & Irish Lions!
Alfie Reynolds, Will Kelleher, Owen Slot and Stephen Jones are in Brisbane to look ahead to the match. They ask whether the tour matches have adequately prepared the Lions for the series. Plus, what do the latest call-ups tell us about the modern tour? Do they devalue the brand or show the midweek matches between tests need to be a thing of the past?
Plus, Will chats to Justin Harrison and Owen Finegan to look back on 2001 when Australia beat the Lions.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Ruck, the journalist'sby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times, |
| 0:21.3 | where we are finally going to be in one place for one week as we build up to the first test |
| 0:25.5 | between the Wallabies and the British and Irish Lions. |
| 0:28.4 | I'm Alfie Reynolds and joined here in an absolutely beauty of an evening in Brisbane with Stephen Jones. |
| 0:34.7 | Steve, how are you? |
| 0:35.5 | Very good, thanks. |
| 0:36.4 | Good, good. |
| 0:36.9 | Will Callagher? |
| 0:37.6 | Hello. All good? |
| 0:38.8 | Yeah, we're all good. We're back at Churchy School, Brisbane, and it's a place for news, really, isn't it? Because last time we were here, poor old Thomas Williams got ruled out the tour, and it was raining, but now we're back, and there's more injury news that we'll get onto, and call-ups. plenty of cool ups yeah plenty of call-ups which we'll get onto in just a moment but a man who is just joined |
| 0:55.6 | talking of call-ups exactly Plenty of cool-ups, yeah, plenty of call-ups, which we'll get onto in just a moment, but a man who has just joined the talk. |
| 0:55.6 | Talking of call-ups. |
| 0:56.7 | Exactly. |
| 0:57.3 | The reinforcements for the Ruck and the Times and the Sunday Times. Owen Slott is with us. How are you, Slotty? Oh, yeah, terrific. Am I the Geography 1 or the Bomb Squad? I'm not sure. Anyway, I'm late in. |
| 1:07.7 | I was in the UK about 36 hours ago, |
| 1:11.3 | and now I'm going to try and make sense on this podcast. |
| 1:14.0 | Hello, Slotty! Yeah, Jones. When do you come in? Well, I just thought that you needed reinforcements, didn't you? No. Okay. Well, anyway, they sent me out. We picked him on like geography, really, only rather than, were you next cap off the rank do you think or were you valid selection |
| 1:28.5 | are you devaluing the jersey by coming out here if it was a geography selection and i suppose me being |
| 1:32.7 | in sw 13 versus maybe mark palmer in edinburgh yeah i got i got the nod on that just about |
| 1:38.4 | next next cab off the rank definitely i would have picked lottie so we'll get into all the |
| 1:43.3 | xwell that means a lot News of the day coming up, selections, geography four, or whatever we want to call it. And we're also going to be hearing from Justin Harrison and Owen Finnegan. Will, you've had a chat with them looking back at their Lions' memories of beating the Lions in that test series in 2001. |
| 2:01.3 | 2001, thank you. |
... |
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