\n<\/p>\n
The Ireland wing Mack Hansen is expected to miss out on a place in the British & Irish Lions\u2019 team for the first Test against the Wallabies on Saturday with a foot injury. Hansen\u2019s setback comes with the fullback Blair Kinghorn also poised to miss out after both skipped training on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Lions have not yet officially ruled Hansen or Kinghorn out of contention to face Australia in Brisbane, but coach Andy Farrell has already privately picked his side for Saturday and given neither player was able to train on Tuesday it seems unlikely that either will feature.<\/p>\n
Losing Hansen is a blow to Farrell who reserved special praise for the Ireland winger after his performance against Western Force earlier in the tour. Canberra-born Hansen had been pushing Tommy Freeman hard for a place on the right wing before an injury sustained in last Saturday\u2019s thumping 48-0 victory over the AUNZ Invitational XV in Adelaide.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the forwards coach John Dalziel denied that Hansen was carrying an injury despite the decision to expedite Darcy Graham\u2019s arrival into the squad ahead of his Scotland colleagues Ewan Ashman and Rory Sutherland. The Lions have since confirmed, however, that Hansen sustained the injury last Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe hurt his foot in the game, I don\u2019t think it is anything serious but he was managed today,\u201d said Lions assistant coach Richard Wigglesworth. \u201cHopefully he will be fully integrated pretty quickly. It is nothing that we are overly concerned about but we need to make sure we have enough numbers at training. But it doesn\u2019t look too serious. A doubt is anyone who didn\u2019t train fully today, but he\u2019s definitely not ruled out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know we have got such quality across all positions so we would be lying if we said [team selection] was easy. In terms of how quick it was there have been two or three conversations, we have picked and we will tell the lads tomorrow. Nothing has been announced so that\u2019s always subject to change in terms of how they\u2019ve trained and what that\u2019s looked like. That\u2019s why these things are kept back a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Hugo Keenan is expected to start at fullback when British & Irish Lions face the Wallabies in the first Test in Brisbane on Saturday.<\/span> Photograph: Matt Turner\/AAP<\/p>\n With Kinghorn also sitting out training and Elliot Daly already sent home with a broken arm, Hugo Keenan is expected to start at fullback while Marcus Smith could profit with a place among the replacements on Saturday as someone who offers cover at fullback. Against the AUNZ Invitational XV, Smith was on the bench covering fly-half and fullback alongside Owen Farrell who impressed in a 30-minute cameo at inside-centre.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week’s action reviewed<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Wigglesworth, who played alongside Farrell at Saracens for a decade, added: \u201cI\u2019ve enjoyed [working with him again]. He\u2019s done exactly what we knew he was going to do in terms of help and influence, and obviously contribute on the field when that time came up. It\u2019s been great to work with him again, but I was probably more excited for all those who hadn\u2019t worked with him, to be able to experience that. He\u2019s been great, as we knew he would be. Not everyone did, but we knew.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been on record hundreds of times about Owen. You all know how good he is, the influence he has, his knowledge and how he helps other people get better. We all knew how good he was going to be and it\u2019s been that way. He\u2019s the influential Owen that we know and love.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Ireland wing Mack Hansen is expected to miss out on a place in the British & Irish Lions\u2019 team for the first Test against the Wallabies on Saturday with a foot injury. Hansen\u2019s setback comes with the fullback Blair Kinghorn also poised to miss out after both skipped training on Tuesday. The Lions have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[346,4045,1845,584,4047,796,1977,4046,76,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-10886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-blow","10":"tag-expected","11":"tag-face","12":"tag-hansen","13":"tag-injury","14":"tag-lions","15":"tag-mack","16":"tag-test","17":"tag-tour"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}