Andy Farrell waves away claims of British and Irish Lions complacency during lightning delay after defeat to Australia – ‘Utter rubbish’

The Lions and Wallabies were forced to suspend play for almost 40 minutes at the beginning of the second half due to lightning strikes within 10km of Accor Stadium in Sydney.

Cameras in both changing rooms captured the preparations of each side during the delay, and the broadcast showed some Lions players on their phones before returning to the field.

He continued: “You don’t know until you know, and when you do know, then you have to agree that the warm-up time allocated is going to be acceptable to both teams.

“We agreed on 10 minutes for the warm-up, and through our advice from our experts in that field, we only made the call to come out five minutes before and stay there so that we’d be ready to go.”

The Wallabies were 8-0 ahead when the delay started, and came back out firing to increase their lead over the tourists.

Joe Schmidt had his side keeping warm during the break with fitness bikes and passing drills to keep them fresh for a return to play.

Soon after play resumed, Max Jorgenson’s try saw the hosts take a 15-0 lead and quash the Lions’ hopes of a whitewash.

“We had been warned that there might be lightning, so we had a little bit of a plan,” Schmidt said.

“We wanted to make sure that players kept moving, so we had different guys rotating on the bikes. We had four balls in the changing room that we were just throwing around, just so they could stay connected.”

The Lions hit back through Jac Morgan’s try, but the Wallabies replied quickly as Tate McDermott’s sniping try secured the win.

“I suppose what came off the back of that is that Australia hit the ground running and thoroughly deserved their win,” Farrell said.

“Rigor mortis was setting in at one stage there for the lads. Anyway, I suppose that’s what you come to expect with a schedule like a Lions schedule, so we’ve seen it all now, haven’t we?”