British and Irish Lions: New partnership will stop players joining tour late

The British and Irish Lions will tour Australia in 2025

Players picked for the 2025 British and Irish Lions will be available for the whole tour of Australia thanks to a new partnership with Premiership Rugby and the United Rugby Championship.

Players involved in knock-out stages of club competitions - like Saracens' Jamie George in 2021 - have missed the start of recent tours.

But they will now able able to take part in all pre-tour activities.

Lions chair Ieuan Evans celebrated the "unity" underpinning the agreement.

He added that the tour will now be able to "showcase the best of what our game has to offer".

"To achieve our ambition of success on the pitch, we need our very best players, and this partnership is crucial to this," Evans added.

The Lions' last Test series win came in Australia in 2013, before a drawn series in New Zealand in 2017 and a loss to South Africa in 2021.

The deal comes after several players from the Premiership - the top flight in English rugby - were unavailable in 2021 when a warm-up Test against Japan clashed with the Premiership final, which took place on the same day the tour began.

Earlier this year, the opening three weeks of the Premiership coincided with the knock-out stages of the World Cup.

Teams from Wales, Scotland and Ireland play in the United Rugby Championship, along with South African and Italian sides.