Questions galore for Farrell in pursuit of perfect Lions 23

LONDON -When Andy Farrell named his British and Irish Lions squad there were few dissenting voices, but while his 38 might have been largely predictable, it is a very different story when it comes to his preferred test team.

One of the joys of the Lions is how players initially seen as on the periphery, or even late injury additions, often force themselves into test contention, but there is usually an established core of maybe a dozen who most fans would pencil in as test certainties.

That is not, however, the case for this campaign, which kicks off with a warm-up against Argentina on Friday ahead of three tests in Australia.

Farrell named his squad for that game on Wednesday, but nothing can be drawn from it as his hands were tied by the involvement of so many players in last Saturday's club finals.

Captain Maro Itoje will lead the team in Dublin and, having played all three Lions tests in New Zealand and South Africa, he is a nailed-on starter in a squad full of proven international quality but short of star names.

Farrell will already have strong ideas, but how players perform and interact over the next few weeks will have a huge impact.

The halfback selection is often seen as setting the tone for how a team will play and the current favourite combination to start is Jamison Gibson-Park and Finn Russell.

The former has been consistently superb for Ireland and Russell has added a layer of consistency and pragmatism for Premiership-winning Bath which has silenced most of those who criticised his "maverick" tendencies as too high-risk.

The Scot showed he still has his "did he just do that?" moments when he stunned Twickenham by slinging a try-scoring pass to Max Ojomoh in the Premiership final when he could easily have crossed