'Finish on a high' - Russell seeks 3-0 Lions clean sweep

Finn Russell has started at fly-half in both of the British and Irish Lions' Test wins over Australia

In the corridor outside the dressing rooms in the basement of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Finn Russell appeared through one door and his opposite number, Tom Lynagh, appeared through another.

Thirty minutes after the British and Irish Lions had completed a thrilling 29-26 win over Australia in the second Test - clinching the series - the fly-halves swapped jerseys and had a chat. Russell pulled the gold over his head and, let's just say, it was a tight fit. "Jeez," he said to Lynagh, "what size is this?!"

Both players laughed but Russell laughed longest. If the earlier games on this tour showed his brilliance in attack and defence, in bossing a backline and getting it moving forward through simple things done well and complicated things made look easy, Saturday night was more of a grind.

The Wallabies reborn, the stadium bouncing, the tourists on the back foot, the threat of defeat ever-present, Russell mixed great with good with not so good. His goalkicking was off. Nothing was straightforward at the MCG.

"Surely you guys know me enough now that if I miss a conversion, it's not going to be the end of the world," smiled Russell when talking about some of the things that didn't go right for him.

Cometh the moment, cometh the man. Two minutes left and a two-point deficit, the Scot was marching his team downfield. With a minute and a half to go, his control was complete, his nerve unwavering. He ran diagonally, left to right, drew in Joseph Suaalii, fended him with his left hand before popping a pass over the head of Tom Wright to Blair Kinghorn with his right.

Two Wallabies eliminated. Amid the maelstrom Russell kept directing the traffic around him until Hugo Keenan scored a famous try to win it. How did Russell feel in those breathless moments?

"Pretty chilled, pretty calm," he said. "We had a lot of momentum, we were on top of them at the end of it. We had them on the ropes when Blair broke through.

"There was no stress. The whole team was amazing. Jac Morgan's cleanout that obviously created the try, it was just sticking to what we were doing, just playing rugby."

Russell cut a curious figure in the bowels of the MCG. Smiling broadly in his ill-fitting Lynagh jersey, he had a garland of chocolate bars strung around his neck.

"Sione [Tuipulotu] gave it to me," he said. It's called a lei or a kahoa in Polynesian culture, a sign of honour and friendship which, Russell revealed, his daughter was taking a particular interest in.

"It's from Sione. His family brought it from Tonga. There are a few boys inside [in the dressing room] that have the chocolate around their necks. I don't fully understand it, to be honest. I'm obviously not from the islands, but I'm enjoying it."

Russell stood there awhile, shooting the breeze about what had gone before, talking coolly about his momentous night with the air of a guy playing for Falkirk or Stirling County on a Saturday with his mates.

Did he know that theirs was the biggest comeback - from 23-5 down to winning 29-26 - in Lions history? He did not. Did he know that this was his 15th consecutive victory this season? He didn't know that either. His previous best was seven for Glasgow and Scotland - and that was a decade ago.

"Everyone here has been gunning for this for their whole career," he said. "To get to the Lions is one thing and then to get a series win is another. This is my third tour and I'd not won one, so it's so special to get this, bringing four nations together to be a family for five, six weeks.

"But it's not job done yet. We need to go and try and finish it off next week. Even though we've got the series, we need to go and finish on a high."

Playing the most rounded rugby of his career, Russell has is having the season of his life. The sparks of genius will always be a thrilling part of who he is as a player, but his game management is world class as well. His defence, his mental strength - he's the complete 10. Folk in Scotland have known this for years. Now everybody else must know it, too.

The weary old cliche of the 'maverick' is surely dead and buried to all. He's won a Premiership title and a European Challenge Cup with Bath - and now a Lions series. He is one of his generation's pre-eminent fly-halves.

Saturday was his biggest high and as he celebrated it was hard not to cast the mind back to more troubling times. His initial fallout with Gregor Townsend and Scotland in the spring of 2020. His words revealed how angst-ridden he was. It was not a happy time. He went into exile.

The second wave of that rancour was in 2022 when Townsend didn't pick him for Scotland's squad for the autumn, instead going with Adam Hastings, Blair Kinghorn (in what was called the Blair Switch Project from playing full-back to playing 10) and the young Glasgow player Ross Thompson.

Thompson picked ahead of Russell? It caused a sensation. The feeling back then was that the Russell and Townsend relationship had run its course and that he might never play Test rugby again, might never fulfil all the things he wanted to fulfil. It was a fleeting thought, but it was real at the time. Mercifully, the pair patched things up and grew close again. From there to here has been one giant leap for Finnkind.

Russell calls his Lions experience a "mad journey" that began when he became part of the so-called Geography Six, parachuted into New Zealand as midweek fodder in 2017. Four years later, he was injured in South Africa, his only Test action coming on the last day, when he made a big impression in a losing cause.

"You've got to appreciate every part of it. You can't look back and think, had I not been injured in South Africa, had I been called out before in New Zealand, you can't look like that. You've got to look at the positives.

"It's always a privilege getting called into the Lions, whether that's later on in the tour or being there from the start.

"This year's been very special. We've won a couple of titles with Bath - and I've not won much in my career. It's hard to appreciate it just now, because you're still in the moment, you're still half an hour or an hour after the game, so you're still riding on that wave.

"But when I get down time, and if I get any time away from the kids, I can reflect and it'll make it even more special. It's probably one of the best nights [of his life]."

There is only one more thing to achieve in Australia and that's to leave with a 3-0 series win and a 9-0 tour. You have to go back to Argentina in 1927 to find the last time the Lions won every game in a multi-Test series.

Sydney is the final destination. "Everyone wants to play in that game," said Russell. "When we come back in on Monday, we'll be ready to go again. If we can make it a 3-0 series, that's amazing. Everyone's going to be gunning for that."