“I think if there’s a situation where call-ups are going to happen for any player that will be dealt with at the appropriate time when an announcement’s to be made. And right now there’s no announcement,” he said.

“I’m not giving what anyone else is saying a second thought. I’m concentrating on our team tomorrow. I’m concentrating on coaching the team as well as I can.”

However, the Times’ chief rugby correspondent Owen Slot (and, indeed, All Blacks coach Steve Hansen) expect new players to join up with the squad ahead of next Tuesday’s game, with a number ten in Farrell’s absence of utmost importance.

Lions definitely going to call up 5 or 6 players after this w/e’s game. This was always part of the plan.

— owenslotTheTimes (@owenslot) June 16, 2017

Slot makes the point that while George Ford would normally be the natural choice to come in and replace his compatriot, he is in a different time zone with Argentina (which would also seem to rule out Mike Brown at full-back) and suggests that Finn Russell could be poached from the Scotland squad in Australia.

Wales, meanwhile are also in New Zealand to face Tonga so selecting players from that squad will not be a problem at all, and Joe Schmidt’s Ireland are in Japan.

The identities of the players are not yet known – in fact, the players themselves are believed to have no idea if they will be selected, and are carrying on with their nations as normal until they are told otherwise.

Interestingly, the report in the Times also claims that this was always the plan regardless of the subsequent injuries to Hogg and Farrell, alleging that Gatland had cleared his plans to increase the squad to 45 (or even higher) in advance of the initial panel’s departure for New Zealand.

_____

[gravityform id=”1″ title=”true” description=”true”]