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Why Finn Russell 'edges' Marcus Smith in race for the Lions 10 shirt

Marcus Smith and Finn Russell on the 2021 British and Irish Lions tour (Photos by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Heading into the Autumn Nations Series, the two front-runners to wear the British and Irish Lions No 10 jersey at the end of the season were Scotland’s Finn Russell and England’s Marcus Smith.

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Two weeks in, and not much has changed. Both players have actually lost all the matches they’ve played in (Russell against South Africa, and Smith against the All Blacks and Australia), but they’ve still come out in credit. In fact, it was Smith’s withdrawal in the loss to New Zealand that caused the most consternation.

Barring injury, a calamitous drop in form or a miraculous rise from one of the outsiders, both players will be on the plane to Australia in six months’ time. The real question is which one will start against the Wallabies.

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Both toured South Africa in 2021 – Smith being called up midway through as cover for an injured Russell – and both have taken their game up another level since then, so the race is on.

Former England scrum-half Ben Youngs puts forward a very compelling case as to why Russell currently ‘edges’ ahead of the Englishman.

Fixture
British & Irish Lions
Australia
04:45
19 Jul 25
British & Irish Lions
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Joining RugbyPass TV’s Boks Office this week, in collaboration with his own podcast For the Love of RugbyYoungs shared what he believes is a “massively overlooked” part of the Scot’s game, which is his game management.

Though Youngs, a Lion himself, didn’t actually discuss who he thinks should start in the red jersey, he did compare the two fly-halves, which may be food for thought for Andy Farrell.

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“His actual game management is massively overlooked because you associate him with the highlight reels,” the 129 England and Lions international said.

“But everyone forgets that he’s so effective at getting out of his half, decision-making, execution of kicks, managing that territory battle- he’s phenomenal at that.

“I look at him and Marcus Smith, where they’re very similar ball-in-hand, but where Finn edges Marcus for me right now as a Test player is he’s also fantastic at managing the game. Australia v England at the weekend, there were times where your 10 has to control that game and bring it back to the power game for England.

“That’s where Russell sometimes doesn’t get the plaudits he deserves. He’s amazing with front-foot ball, but he’s also very, very good at managing the game.”

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Former South Africa captain John Smit is also an admirer of the Bath playmaker, however, he likes the defensive side of his game.

Joining the podcast this week, the World Cup-winning captain said: “Everyone sees him as this attacking maverick.

“He does try a little bit more than most fly-halves – if you put him behind a massive back I’d love to see what he could do – but what I love about him is he loves to hit. He doesn’t shy away from that vacuum and he puts his shoulder in and he gets stuck in.

“It was quite interesting listening to him talk, he comes across as a guy who’s fair-weather and playing the game, but he loves playing for Scotland and he hates losing.”

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Comments

2 Comments
G
GS 37 days ago

"Edges" it? Really? Marcus Smith is a great stand off, but he isn't fit to lace Russell's boots. That is no slur on Smith, but in every aspect of the game, Russell is better. Put it this way, if Russell was English they would have beaten the All Blacks and Australia comfortably.

T
Tom 37 days ago

Russell is the better ten at the moment. His kicking from hand is slightly better and his passing game is probably the best in the world. Smith is a more dangerous runner.

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JW 4 hours ago
Does South Africa have a future in European competition?

I rated Lowe well enough to be an AB. Remember we were picking the likes of George Bridge above such players so theres no disputing a lot of bad decisions have been made by those last two coaches. Does a team like the ABs need a finicky winger who you have to adapt and change a lot of your style with to get benefit from? No, not really. But he still would have been a basic improvement on players like even Savea at the tail of his career, Bridge, and could even have converted into the answer of replacing Beauden at the back. Instead we persisted with NMS, Naholo, Havili, Reece, all players we would have cared even less about losing and all because Rieko had Lowe's number 11 jersey nailed down.


He was of course only 23 when he decided to leave, it was back in the beggining of the period they had started retaining players (from 2018 onwards I think, they came out saying theyre going to be more aggressive at some point). So he might, all of them, only just missed out.


The main point that Ed made is that situations like Lowe's, Aki's, JGP's, aren't going to happen in future. That's a bit of a "NZ" only problem, because those players need to reach such a high standard to be chosen by the All Blacks, were as a country like Ireland wants them a lot earlier like that. This is basically the 'ready in 3 years' concept Ireland relied on, versus the '5 years and they've left' concept' were that player is now ready to be chosen by the All Blacks (given a contract to play Super, ala SBW, and hopefully Manu).


The 'mercenary' thing that will take longer to expire, and which I was referring to, is the grandparents rule. The new kids coming through now aren't going to have as many gp born overseas, so the amount of players that can leave with a prospect of International rugby offer are going to drop dramatically at some point. All these kiwi fellas playing for a PI, is going to stop sadly.


The new era problem that will replace those old concerns is now French and Japanese clubs (doing the same as NRL teams have done for decades by) picking kids out of school. The problem here is not so much a national identity one, than it is a farm system where 9 in 10 players are left with nothing. A stunted education and no support in a foreign country (well they'll get kicked out of those countries were they don't in Australia).


It's the same sort of situation were NZ would be the big guy, but there weren't many downsides with it. The only one I can think was brought up but a poster on this site, I can't recall who it was, but he seemed to know a lot of kids coming from the Islands weren't really given the capability to fly back home during school xms holidays etc. That is probably something that should be fixed by the union. Otherwise getting someone like Fakatava over here for his last year of school definitely results in NZ being able to pick the cherries off the top but it also allows that player to develop and be able to represent Tonga and under age and possibly even later in his career. Where as a kid being taken from NZ is arguably going to be worse off in every respect other than perhaps money. Not going to develop as a person, not going to develop as a player as much, so I have a lotof sympathy for NZs case that I don't include them in that group but I certainly see where you're coming from and it encourages other countries to think they can do the same while not realising they're making a much worse experience/situation.

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