Paul O’Connell has expressed doubts about whether he would be ready to assist Andy Farrell on the Lions tour to Australia next year, should he be asked.
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The Ireland forwards coach, who has toured three times with the Lions and captained the squad in 2009, has been rumored as a potential addition to the head coach’s team.
“I don’t know, I don’t know if I’d be…certain coaches would go on that and they’d be really confident, they’d be doing it longer than I’d be,” O’Connell said in an interview with Joe Molloy on the new Indo Sport podcast.
“I think it would be a tough tour, you’ve two games a week, different countries coming together. Lions coaching, Warren Gatland and Shaun Edwards did such a good job with it under Ian McGeechan in 2009, they simplified the game so much that within two, three training sessions we knew what we stood for.
“You need to be coaching a long time to be able to simplify things, there’s a real skill-set in simplifying the game, they did a great job with that. I don’t know if I’d be there yet.
“Listen, it’s not easy – Lions coaching is not easy. Players are in their clubs, their countries, they’ve a way they believe in.
“They meet you for two, three weeks and they might not get selected in some of them and they start chirping… you really have to know what you stand for and how you’re going to go about it.”