Andy Farrell says Lions 'won’t sugar-coat' defeat to Argentina

By Duncan Bech, PA Rugby Union Correspondent

Andy Farrell demanded an improvement from his British and Irish Lions when they arrive in Australia after they slipped to a 28-24 defeat by Argentina in Dublin.

The Lions lost their opening tour match for the first time since 1971 after their second-half fightback was overturned when Santiago Cordero finished the match-winning try in the 59th minute.

On Saturday they head Down Under before facing the Western Force a week later and Farrell is seeking an immediate response to the error-strewn display seen at a sold-out Aviva Stadium.

“We made it a tough game. Congratulations to Argentina, they thoroughly deserved to win the match. I’m sure that’s a big moment in Argentinean rugby history,” Farrell said.

“We had plenty of opportunities and we should have done better to convert them, but the whole story of the game is that we compounded too many errors.

“I wouldn’t give familiarity as an excuse. We need to be better than that. The Lions are good players coming together.

“We won’t sugar-coat this. We need to be honest because if we’re not honest, how do we gain trust with each other?

“Losing hurts, especially in this jersey. We need to find the solutions pretty quickly and be honest with ourselves because some good has to come from this.

 

“Of course we asked a lot of the players and maybe we put too much pressure on the side because it looked like we were a little disconnected at times.

“We’ll review what we said we were going to do as a team. We need to make sure we get something positive from this because it’s all about how we move forward.

“Some players will be happy and some players won’t and will be dying to get another chance out there. We’ve got to learn a lot of lessons from that.

“We want to see a better all round performance. There wasn’t just one thing, it was the compounding of quite a few bits.

“The amount of balls that we threw blindly either on to the floor or to the opposition was a standout.

“The scraps on the floor always seemed to go to Argentina, so there was a bit more fight and hunger from them that we can’t accept.”

Maro Itoje criticised the Lions’ accuracy as his first outing as captain ended in the tourists’ first defeat to Argentina in eight matches..

“It was a spectacular occasion. The fans gave us a glimpse of what to expect in Australia,” Itoje said.

“We gave ourselves numerous opportunities but we weren’t accurate enough at times and weren’t consistent enough in piling pressure on to Argentina.”