The Telegraph.

Welcome back, everyone.

Have you got your breath back yet?

I'm Charles Richardson of the Telegraph Rugby podcast.

It's my pleasure to introduce today one of our esteemed rugby editing cohort, Alan Dimmock,

who's going to join me to run through the Lions Squad announcement that we've just heard at the O2 Arena,

not as full of shocks and surprises as we necessarily hoped or expected,

but still plenty of talking points that we're going to get our teeth

stuck into over the next half an hour or so.

Well, what a strangely Zen-like experience that was.

Yeah, I mean, we were properly sort of preparing for left field shouts, and I think we were

really, really all on the Owen Farrell bandwagon,

not necessarily that we wanted him to be selected, but I think there were people who did want him

to be included, but I think we were all sort of expecting him to be in, not just because of the

Andy Farrell link, but because of chatting to sources, listening to people who have got

their ear to the ground,

who have been involved in Lyons camps,

who are just sort of so sold on him as a test match animal.

You know, this sort of phrase that we've got, a test match animal.

But we'll come back into all of that in a few minutes.

We'll also have to talk about the man of the moment, Henry Pollock,

and other talking points as well.

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