British and Irish Lions women’s head coach Jo Yapp has resolved to pick the best possible squad for the inaugural tour of New Zealand next summer – a stance that could mean the group is heavily weighted towards world champions England.
The Red Roses have won 38 successive Tests and have not lost to Scotland, Wales or Ireland since 2015.
“Ultimately, when it comes to the Lions, it’s about picking the best players,” Yapp told BBC Sport.
“That is absolutely key – if you’re a Lion, you want to know that you deserve to be a Lion.
“I appreciate kind of the dominance of England from that perspective, but there are players in every squad that you go, ‘wow, they are really talented’.”
Yapp, appointed last month, says she has already taken advice from Andy Farrell, who led the men’s Lions team to a 2-1 series victory over Australia last year.
Now she is keen to get in place a coaching team that can get up to speed quickly before the women’s team’s first match against a Black Ferns XV on 4 September 2027.
“That was a key thing from him,” Yapp said of her conversation with Farrell. “You have such a short runway in a lot of terms. You don’t have a season to bed anything in. You need to be able to hit the ground running.
“Getting the right people around me that I trust is really important.”
Yapp has taken on a talent development role with the Rugby Football Union and was part of the England coaching staff at the recent Women’s Six Nations, after stepping down as Australia coach in the wake of a run to the quarter-finals at last year’s Women’s Rugby World Cup.
Lions chief executive Ben Calveley said Yapp, who won 70 caps for England as a player, was the outstanding candidate to lead the women’s team’s first tour.
“We had a really far and wide search, a really robust process with lots of competition and lots of people spoken to from across the international game,” Calveley said.
“We were unanimous as a panel that Jo Yapp was the right person to lead the tour.
“Jo’s been immersed in the women’s game for many decades as a player and a captain, but then also as a coach at pathway level, at club level, and international level.
“But when we spoke to Jo, there were a whole bunch of different things that impressed. One of them was a very clear and detailed understanding of the game – how to tactically and technically put a gameplan together to be successful.
“Maybe even more important than that was this focus on people, a real commitment to culture, on the importance of getting a group of players that maybe haven’t played together before to come together and commit to a common goal and to each other.”