As Finn Russell’s mis-pass hung in the Brisbane night air, looping over the heads of four Australian defenders, Sione Tuipulotu had a sudden feeling of deja vu.
During the ball’s two-second hang time, the Scotland centre realised he had seen this movie before. Seven years earlier, Russell threw what might well be the pass of the century in a 2018 Calcutta Cup match against England that skimmed Jonathan Joseph’s outstretched fingertips before landing into the path of an accelerating Huw Jones.
On Saturday in Brisbane, this time against Australia, Tuipulotu simply had to run on to Russell’s pass to effectively put the first British and Irish Lions test to bed after just eight minutes.
“He threw a pretty similar pass a few years ago against England to Huw Jones off his left hand,” Tuipulotu said. “It was kind of weird, when he was throwing it, I was kind of thinking of that, thinking he was going to throw it into that space. I didn’t have to do much, just had to accelerate and catch the ball. That’s why playing with special players is pretty cool. His nature helps everyone and calms everyone. Then you add to that that he’s got one of the best skillsets of any 10 in the world, it’s a joy to play with.”
This is already shaping up to be Russell’s summer. After winning the Premiership title with Bath, he is using this Lions tour to cement his reputation as the best first five-eighths in the world.
After years of being variously dismissed as flaky and flashy, the Scotland playmaker is now showing he has the temperament as well as the talent.
Finn Russell at his mercurial best 🪄
— British & Irish Lions (@lionsofficial) July 19, 2025
Watch every match live on @SkySports. #Lions2025 pic.twitter.com/AFXygBVE22
While head coach Andy Farrell made a point of praising him for not getting “bored of doing the right thing”, it is his glorious range of passing that had former Lions first five-eighths Ronan O’Gara and Dan Biggar purring in the Sky Sports commentary box.
"He's in flow mode at the moment!"
— Sky Sports Rugby Union (@SkySportsRugby) July 19, 2025
Dan Biggar and Ronan O'Gara on what separates Finn Russell from the rest 💪 pic.twitter.com/leqYnImXkI
Lee Blackett, his attack coach at Bath, says there are two things that make Russell’s distribution so special. Firstly, his natural wrist strength. For the pass to Tuipulotu, there is minimal wind-up off his left hand to throw the ball 20m at a velocity where there is no risk of an intercept.
Secondly, and more importantly, as Blackett told my colleague Charlie Morgan, his ability to catch-and-pass – how quickly he gets the ball in and out of his hands – is phenomenal.
According to Blackett, a large part of Russell’s technique was honed over the course of 15 weeks in Christchurch in 2013. Under the John MacPhail Scholarship, a couple of young Scotland players are sent abroad to study from the best of the best, which for Russell and Sam Hidalgo-Clyne meant heading to New Zealand to rub shoulders with the likes of Dan Carter and Richie McCaw.
As part of the internship, Russell played for Lincoln University under coach John Haggart, who runs Canterbury’s International High Performance Unit. “Finn wasn’t your typical, driven, high-performing academy boy coming out of a private school. He worked as a stone mason,” Haggart tells Telegraph Sport. “He loved a beer. He loved being around students. He loved enjoying himself after a game. Because of the environment he was in, he was able to flourish rather than being restricted by boundaries.”
As much as Russell enjoyed himself – and Haggart still shudders about the thought of him perched precariously upon the back of Hidalgo-Clyne’s moped – there was serious work to be done. In the Canterbury set-up, they practise the basic building blocks of passing, catching and running with almost religious fervour.
“We would do a lot of work on our ‘no witnesses, only work-ons’,” Haggart said. “You spend time before training and after training just working on fundamental run-catch-pass. Sometimes that would be a static run-catch-pass or walking-run-catch-pass. When Finn came out, he had an opportunity as a young man in the 15 weeks that he was over here just to spend time on his run-catch-pass.
“Spending time on those fundamentals was a really high priority for us at that time during the Dan Carter era. It was really important for a 10 who could catch early, eyes up, with his cone of vision looking ahead to see what can give him the opportunity to do what’s next.
“We work on the technical side of catching the ball on your fingertips and shifting the ball quickly across your body rather than catching, reloading and then falling away. It is pretty simple stuff but because he was at a stage of learning in his life, he was able to adopt those principles really quickly and put that into practice.”
Go back a few phases before Tuipulotu’s try and Russell plucks Furlong’s pass out of the air with his right hand before releasing Dan Sheehan with an inside ball in the teeth of the Australian defence, which would have felt familiar to the Carter-era Crusaders side. “Catch early, carry centre and you either shift quickly or you are catching it flat like Finn loves to do, which really tests the defences,” Haggart said. “I think catching early and catching flat with such quick hands enables him to put people into space while holding defence lines off him.”
What Haggart also noted was Russell’s improvisation. After receiving an offload from Furlong, Russell originally shapes to send a cross-kick towards wing Tommy Freeman, but in less than a second he notices that fullback Tom Wright had drifted across, leaving the space for him to pull the trigger to Tuipulotu.
It was this ability to adapt to a changing picture as much as the execution of the pass that earned a gushing tribute from O’Gara, La Rochelle’s head coach, on Sky Sports. “You have a game plan but the first try isn’t in the game plan,” O’Gara said. “That’s when you know you have a gem on your hands and he plays the situation in front of him. In the olden days, it is a skip six to Sione.”
Haggart had no doubt that Russell was destined for greater things and perhaps the most intriguing subtext to the end of his time at Lincoln University, where he won the player-of-the-year award, was that there was a serious push from figures inside the Canterbury organisation to keep him in New Zealand.
“Canterbury had spoken to me and we had spoken to Finn about the possibility of him extending his stay here and I know Canterbury were very keen to bring him in,” Haggart said. “But he was under contract and we had a long-standing relationship with the SRU [Scottish Rugby Union] that we needed to respect. If he had been out here on his own, I am sure Canterbury would have hidden his passport and said ‘you are not going anywhere’.”