DUBLIN — Andy Farrell mentioned the British & Irish Lions should discover options shortly after they slumped to a 28-24 defeat to Argentina in Dublin on Friday.
It was the Lions’ tour opener as they put together to journey to Australia on Saturday for his or her 2025 sequence.
However, it was hardly the joyful sendoff they envisaged because the Lions made a listing of errors and bought their tour off to a shedding begin. Farrell mentioned post-match that Argentina regarded hungrier than the Lions and was alarmed by the variety of errors his aspect made.
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The Lions scored three tries — by way of Bundee Aki, a penalty attempt to Tadhg Beirne — however ended up falling to a masterclass from Tomas Albornoz. For Farrell, it illustrated how a lot work the Lions need to do as they give the impression of being to win their first sequence since 2013.
“We made it a troublesome recreation did not we? Congratulations to Argentina and I am positive that is a giant second of their historical past,” Farrell informed his post-match information convention.
“You possibly can throw it throughout and say we had loads of alternatives however the entire story of the sport is we made too many errors and we could not put the tempo on the sport we wished to.
“Some gamers can have accomplished themselves proud they usually’ll be hurting. Some individuals will probably be completely happy however others will not they usually’ll be dying for one more likelihood. We’ll be studying a number of classes from that.”
It was the primary time this group performed collectively having met a fortnight in the past, however Farrell mentioned the Lions can don’t have any excuses for his or her sloppy efficiency.
“We should be higher than that,” Farrell mentioned. “It’s what it’s. We ask a number of the gamers and perhaps we put an excessive amount of stress on the aspect because it regarded like we have been disconnected at instances.
“We’ll evaluation what we mentioned and we’d like to ensure we get one thing optimistic from that and it is about how we transfer ahead.”
Farrell was dissatisfied by the variety of free balls which ended up in Argentina palms.
“There is a battle and starvation there we will not settle for,” he mentioned. “We should be sincere. There are particular issues we mentioned we have been going to do and we have to honour that and do it correctly.
“Dropping hurts, particularly on this jersey. We have to discover options shortly and be sincere with ourselves. There must be some good coming from this.”
Maro Itoje mentioned the workforce will study from this and mentioned they’ll kind their wayward lineout.
“We weren’t correct sufficient or constant sufficient in piling stress on Argentina,” Itoje mentioned.
“We’re simply discovering our rhythm. Sadly we could not get the lineout fairly as easy as we wished in the present day. We’ll study the teachings.
“No excuses, we must always’ve been extra correct in the present day. We’ll study and get higher collectively.”
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