{"id":25475,"date":"2025-03-22T13:17:46","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T13:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/george-ford-sale-sharks-fly-half-is-british-and-irish-lions-contender-says-alex-sanderson\/"},"modified":"2025-03-22T13:17:46","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T13:17:46","slug":"george-ford-sale-sharks-fly-half-is-british-and-irish-lions-contender-says-alex-sanderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/george-ford-sale-sharks-fly-half-is-british-and-irish-lions-contender-says-alex-sanderson\/","title":{"rendered":"George Ford: Sale Sharks fly-half is British and Irish Lions contender, says Alex Sanderson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ford&#8217;s 25-minute spell at the Principality Stadium was his only rugby of the Six Nations, but he set up two of England&#8217;s four tries while he was on the field.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Then he took the form with him to Kingston Park in a player-of-the-match display described as a &#8220;masterclass&#8221; by former Scotland full-back Hugo Southwell, who was on co-commentary duty for TNT Sports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ford was orchestrating his team-mates, he had a kicking percentage of 86%, while he provided the highlight of the match with a gorgeous cross kick for Joe Carpenter to slide down on to score, as a sign of a player at the top of his powers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ford now has 99 England caps, but despite over a decade of international experience, he has never made a Lions squad.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Although he has had the two Smiths, Northampton&#8217;s Fin and Marcus of Harlequins, ahead of him in the England pecking order, Lions selection is different.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is expected that Scotland&#8217;s Finn Russell will be one of the number 10s selected, so the question will be who Farrell picks to complement the Bath player.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Both Smiths will come into the equation to make it onto the plane along with Ireland duo Rory Prendergast and Jack Crowley.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/c4g0vw3gnxjo\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ford&#8217;s 25-minute spell at the Principality Stadium was his only rugby of the Six Nations, but he set up two of England&#8217;s four tries while he was on the field. Then he took the form with him to Kingston Park in a player-of-the-match display described as a &#8220;masterclass&#8221; by former Scotland full-back Hugo Southwell, who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[2254,2234,9100,9195,556,713,1850,4717,2204,9196,4350],"class_list":["post-25475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-england","tag-alex","tag-british","tag-contender","tag-flyhalf","tag-ford","tag-george","tag-irish","tag-lions","tag-sale","tag-sanderson","tag-sharks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25477,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25475\/revisions\/25477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}