Welcome along to the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times, and the Lions and the Wallabies have named their teams for the first test this Saturday in Brisbane. I'm Alfie Reynolds, Alex Lowe, Will Kelleher. It is almost here, gents. We have the teams. How are we? We've been waiting a while for this, haven't we? When do we pick our first lines team on the pod december

december yeah our like new year's eve episodes we need to go back and check how many we got right we did

we did okay i think it is the most eagerly awaited team selection every four years isn't it the first

the first lines test i think the fans are all coming in today it feels like this is a day where it launches. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I was in my hotel earlier, just filing the team news copy, which is only around the corner from where we are here at Lions HQ in the middle of Brisbane, and suddenly 50 Lions fans are checking in and you're thinking, oh, here we go, right. Because I remember we were both there in 2017, weren't we, Alex? And that was the first time I'd ever done a Lions. And I hadn't been there for the tour games, and nor had you, Alex, had you. And the rest of our touring group on the Tuesday were in Waikato for the Hamilton Chiefs game. And I was sort of looking around the harbour and kind of going, where are all these, where's the sea of red? I keep hearing so much about. And then Friday, bang, you couldn't get a seat at breakfast in the morning in the middle of Auckland and stuff of that. And I feel like we're just on the cusp of that now, which is great. And we've got a team. And speaking to people that have flown out in the last few days, they were saying that Heathrow is just red shirts everywhere.

So I think it is going to get today or tomorrow.

All of a sudden we're going to be like, whoa, all right, the first test is here. The Lions have named their team. The Wallabies have named their team, as I say. We'll get on to the Aussies in just a moment. It's actually some big team news there in terms of absentees.

But the Lions, what's the big talking point for both of you in terms

of Andy Farrell's squad selection burn and curry in that back row yeah back row and the balance of the

bench I suspect took up 90% of their of their selection meeting I always felt that once Gary ring

rose was ruled out that that Tooplatu and

Hugh Jones was the most obvious selection. So Ringrose missing out is unfortunate for Bundiaki

because you just, you know, when we watched Sione and Hugh Jones played together, they have

that timing and that understanding that they just read each other so well. It just, that's been honed

through a long time at club and country.

That felt like a fairly straightforward decision to me.

But the back row, from the day they name the squad,

you're looking at the number of players and the quality of players

and thinking that is going to be a hell of a decision that they've got to make.

And they've ended up picking not quite what I would

have expected. I always thought they'd pick Tom Curry the whole way through this tour. Others might

have had bigger moments, but every time you ask Andy Farrell about who it is that's impressing

him and why, it's Tom Curry. He's like the sort of represents what they want the character of

...