Loud voices from the north have been arguing that this has not been a great Lions team and that Australia is unworthy to host future Lions tours.
As the former head coach of rugby at the Australian Institute of Sport, the great Brian “Boxhead” O’Shea, would tell me: “Just because people are loud and aggressive does not make them right.”
Here are some facts from the last five Lions tours that expose many of the falsehoods being tossed about by those loud and aggressive voices.
Examination of the average amount of points the Lions scored on their past five tours tells us that this Australian tour has not been a walkover for the Lions.
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On their 2009 tour of South Africa, the average points scored by the Lions during their tour games (that is, not a Test match) was 37. In the Test matches against the Springboks, the average points scored was 25.
In Australia in 2013, the tour games averaged 46 and the Tests 26.
On the 2017 tour of New Zealand, regarded as the toughest of the professional era, the tour games average was 22 points. In the three Tests, the Lions averaged 18 points.
On the 2021 tour of South Africa, the tour games averaged a staggering 45 points and the horridly negative tactics of both teams meant that the Lions only managed to average 16 points in the Test matches.
During the 2025 tour of Australia, the Lions averaged 39 points in the tour games. So on this tour the Lions scored fewer points against the Australian provincial teams than they did in their 2013 and 2021 tours and only two points more than in South Africa in 2009.
Yet the false narrative from the loud and aggressive would have you believe that on this tour the Australians were so weak that the Lions’ scores have been overwhelming.
In the three Tests against Australia in 2025, the Lions averaged the exact same number of points as they did on the exceptionally challenging tour to New Zealand in 2017.
Across the three Test matches of this tour the Lions scored 68 points and the Wallabies scored 67. Hardly an avalanche of difference. Of the six halves of Test match rugby played, the Lions won only two and, perhaps more importantly, the Wallabies won four.
The numbers don’t lie.
To account for the unexpectedly successful response from the Wallabies the loud and aggressive have turned on their own and are twisting the truth, trying to claim this Lions team was below standard.
All utter rubbish.
Apart from the opening 25 minutes of the first Test, the obvious key factor across the three Tests was the remarkable improvement in the Wallabies. Their journey from the awful display against Fiji to winning the third Test was remarkable.
The only grave error that the Lions organisation and their supporters made is that they forgot that the tour was as much for Australia as it was for the Lions.
The narrative that this tour was somehow not a raging success for both the Lions and Rugby Australia is deeply false.
Consider that 453,167 people attended matches across this exceptional tour. A record for the Lions. The second Test at the MCG held the highest attendance ever for a Lions match. The Tests produced some brilliant rugby in a highly competitive series that generated bundles of cash for the four Lions nations and has bailed Australia out of a financial quagmire. One estimate of profit sits at AUS$51 million (€28.5 million).
Money that will go into youth development, the women’s game, supporting amateur clubs and the next generation of players. Money that will wipe out Rugby Australia’s massive debts and allow the game in to survive in Australia.
For that alone, every Lions supporter should be proud. A big thank you to the north from all with crooked noses and Brussel sprout ears Down Under.
On the field, the fear of being humiliated by the Lions triggered the players wearing that famous gold jersey to find something inside themselves that they did not know they possessed and to play like none of us thought they could.
Which is the essence of why we encourage our youth to play rugby. It teaches every player, including those in Test matches, that they have more potential inside them than they can ever imagine. As a collective the power of what a Lions tour means drove the Wallabies to lift themselves to almost snatch the series.
After the unmitigated disaster that was the Lions in South Africa 2021, Andy Farrell and his team have re-established the on-field standards demanded by the great traditions of the Lions.
The Lions played a high tempo, attractive and entertaining style of running rugby that Australians enjoyed and appreciated. For which the Lions deserve great credit and respect.
If the Lions had continued with the negative and self-destructive tactics from 2021, the Australian public, who demand running rugby, would have walked away and the game in Oz may not have survived.
In their post-tour review, I would respectfully ask the Lions’ management to change one crucial aspect of their off-field processes.
In the future, the Lions players must not be shut away from the local rugby community, with the shallow aim of producing huge swathes of social media content to send back to the north to generate money.
On the field, the Lions were inspirational. Off the field, they did not interact with any real effect with the Australian rugby community. In a country where the game is on its knees, that was a heartbreaking error.
From day one of this tour, a false narrative has been pushed from the north that ignores facts. It attempted to create the perception that Australian rugby was so far beneath the standards of the combined strength of the north that they are not worthy of a full Lions tour.
They never let the truth get in the way of some good old-fashioned Aussie bashing and the Wallabies have proved them all wrong. The Lions won the series and, counter-intuitively, ignited a Wallaby resurgence. Financially, the game has been saved in Oz and the four home unions have cash bulging from their pockets.
A Lions tour doesn’t get much better than that.
Here is one truth that you can bank on. The Lions will be back in Australia in 2037.
