The Wallabies have a fabled history of playing two no.7s. McReight and Tizzano may be next

Last weekend, for example, the Welsh picked opensides Jac Morgan at No.6 and Tommy Reffell at No.7, bringing an end to Warren Gatland’s attempt to make a Test No.6 out of players who just weren’t there yet.

England have been going down that path for some time, and last week they started Tom Curry at No.6 with Ben Earl at No.7. When big No.8 Tom Willis was forced off after 36 minutes, England sent on Curry’s literal twin Ben, effectively giving them three openside flankers.

Morgan, Reffell, Earl, and the Currys are joined by Ireland’s Josh van der Flier and Scotland’s Rory Darge as British and Irish Lions No.7 options – and that’s not even including outstanding Englishman Jack Willis, who is playing at No.7 for French champions Toulouse (he is ineligible for England but eligible for the Lions).

Contrast that with the Lions’ options at No.6. The brilliant Beirne is probably the favourite, but there isn’t the same obvious depth available and it would be no surprise if the balance of their back row options are weighted towards opensides with a view to negating McReight and winning the battle on the ground.

Enter Tizzano. He suffered a rather brutal introduction to Test rugby last year when he debuted against the Springboks in Brisbane, but it was noticeable from the images of the Super Rugby Pacific season launch in February that he is now a more robust and thicker-looking player.

It’s reminiscent of the physical development McReight himself went through in the process of going from a Super Rugby standout to a proper Test player.

Tizzano now needs to deliver consistently tough performances to change Joe Schmidt’s thinking, because Tizzano and McReight are yet to share the field together for the Wallabies across Tizzano’s five Test appearances to date.

McReight’s hand injury played a role in this, but Schmidt did have opportunities to start one and use one off the bench on the end-of-season tour but preferred to use the Waratahs’ Langi Gleeson, whose Wallabies future now is unclear after his decision to leave Australia at the end of Super Rugby Pacific.

The preference to have a bigger body on the bench is understandable, but in a bit of an irony it might not be the path the Lions will go down.

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Farrell must be thinking long and hard about how to accommodate two of his strong group of No.7 options in his Test 23, in anticipation that the Wallabies will want to play an uptempo game on home soil. Willis, Tom Curry and Jac Morgan, in particular, are appealing options given their form and presence off the ball.

If that’s the case, McReight and Tizzano might yet play together – even though they will be determined to beat the daylights out of one another in Perth on Saturday.