Tour Squad
The 44-man tour squad was announced on 11 April 2005, with 20 Englishmen, eleven Irishmen, ten Welshmen and three Scots selected. Three further Englishmen were selected subject to them proving their fitness. Many criticised this distribution as England had performed poorly in the 2004 and 2005 Six Nations Championship and Wales had won the 2005 Grand Slam. The squad also included English players who had retired from international rugby (Neil Back, Lawrence Dallaglio), were returning from injury (Richard Hill and potentially Jonny Wilkinson, Phil Vickery and Mike Tindall), or had no international experience (Andrew Sheridan). The original 44-man squad was named as:
Read more about this topic: 2005 British And Irish Lions Tour To New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the words tour and/or squad:
“Do you know I believe that [William Jennings] Bryan will force his nomination on the Democrats again. I believe he will either do this by advocating Prohibition, or else he will run on a Prohibition platform independent of the Democrats. But you will see that the year before the election he will organize a mammoth lecture tour and will make Prohibition the leading note of every address.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)
“Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four-hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)