It is a soul-crushing inevitability that in the weekend before the Lions squad announcement some desperate misfortune will befall a leading candidate. And so the shoulder injury that Caelan Doris duly suffered in Leinster’s defeat by Northampton will have felt like a gut punch to Andy Farrell. Whatever luck the Irish possess, it ran out a long time ago.
To be clear, Doris is not yet ruled out of the Lions tour but you do not have to be Alan Turing to read between the lines of Jacques Nienaber’s bleak prognosis to assume that the Ireland captain is at the very least a long shot to make the plane.