The Lions beat the Brumbies but are there more questions than answers?
The Ruck
Reynolds Alfie
3.4 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The British & Irish Lions defeated the ACT Brumbies 36-24 in Canberra. Another win for Andy Farrell's side but was it another performance which adds more questions for this Lions side?
Will Kelleher and Alex Lowe are alongside Alfie Reynolds in an empty GIO Stadium to reflect on the match. They ask how much the Lions are holding back ahead of the test series against Australia? Is fatigue and the busy travel schedule catching up with the side? And, could Blair Kinghorn be ruled out of the tour?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to The Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from The Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 0:20.2 | I'm Alfie Reynolds, Will Kelleher and Alex Lowe with me once again. And this is becoming pretty routine, an empty stadium late into the night in Australia off the back of another Lions performance. Alex, Will, what do we make of that? This is actually our earliest record. It's only 25 past 11. Yeah, it was doing this the next day, day, basically. It was midnight, wasn't it, on Saturday? So we're making progress. Good work. Well, we're warmer in here. It was pretty cold out in the elements in Canberra with like 500 odd meters above sea level. So it was, what, five degrees here. So I think I was in five layers for the game with a possible sixth that I didn't |
| 0:54.4 | need Alex weather update you were okay I was fine yeah the whole part the meat part half time helped |
| 1:00.2 | yeah yeah the essentials um what do we make of that then lads another win for the lions but another |
| 1:06.3 | game where I feel like I'm leaving here with more questions than answers about where this Lions team is, |
| 1:11.9 | in particular in the context of them preparing for the first test, because it's 10 days away now. |
| 1:16.7 | They've got one more tour game. |
| 1:18.4 | And I kind of left here just thinking it feels like a lot of the same issues that we've had since the Argentina game. |
| 1:23.8 | Yeah, I've found it underwhelming. |
| 1:25.9 | This has all the makings of a Lions test team. |
| 1:28.9 | Not nailed down, as Andy Farrell keeps reminding us, because there is time for change. |
| 1:34.8 | And he'll definitely be considering some of that this evening, because I felt coming here like the Lions should be 30-point winners. |
| 1:43.0 | I know the Brumbies are the best of the Australian |
| 1:45.6 | Super Rugby teams but they were missing nine wallabies will. Yeah including a lot of their best forwards |
| 1:52.2 | yeah and maybe five or six of them are frost valentini. So they were below they were well below |
| 1:59.0 | strength but and so I thought this strong lion's team would come here and pull away. |
| 2:04.8 | And as you say, Alfie, there was a lot of the same issues. |
| 2:07.4 | There's a lot of familiar good stuff. |
| 2:09.3 | I thought they constructed some beautiful tries. |
| 2:12.5 | And they've shown their ability to strike first phase wonderfully. |
| 2:16.7 | And Finn Russell, I i thought had another superb game |
| 2:19.4 | gary ring rose outside center i thought played had a lovely game played really well type furlong i think |
... |
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