All Blacks tipped to make clean sweep

Sports Call - I'm calling it now, and to be honest it's not really that big a call.

3-nil, 3-zip, 3 and O, clean sweep, whitewash - label it what you will - the All Blacks will wipe the floor with the Lions in New Zealand. Those poor Brits (with a sprinkling of Irishmen) won't win a test.

Steve Hansen will castigate me for giving the Lions added motivation, but at the end of the series, with the Lions roar reduced to a mew, I'll remind the All Blacks coach that the tourists needed all the prodding they could get.

Ten matches in just over a month. Three tests against the All Blacks, one against the New Zealand Māori, five games against the New Zealand Super Rugby sides, and a tour opener against a provincial selection - the Lions have cooked their own goose with a schedule of masochistic proportions.

It's bonkers, baffling, bananas even. It might fill their coffers off the field, but it hamstrings their chances on it.

The Blues, Crusaders and Highlanders should be close to full-strength, with Hansen expected to plunge plenty of All Blacks into the games in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin.

These Lions will get beaten by a Super side, put your money on it.

The Māori All Blacks will tame the Lions too.

The Māori, a team more than capable of beating any international side, will produce a haka that outshines the All Blacks before tearing into the Lions, leaving them as stunned as a middle-aged white man whose world views have been questioned by someone who doesn't look like him.

The Lions could be castrated kittens by the time they confront the All Blacks juggernaut for three tests of high velocity piss and vinegar.

Sir Graham Henry coached the All Blacks to victory over the Lions in New Zealand in 2005 and has seen things from the other side, having presided over the Lions series loss in Australia four years earlier.

He believes this year's Lions are taking on the most difficult itinerary in the history of the rugby and said their 'suicidal' schedule made their task mission impossible.

Making matter worse for the northerners, two of those tests are the All Blacks Eden Park fortress. New Zealand haven't lost at the Auckland ground in 35 games and almost 23 years.

Former All Black fullback Christian Cullen jokes that the Auckland ground is a graveyard and he's also predicting a 3-nil series whitewash.

The odds tip in the All Blacks favour everywhere you look.

The Lions coach, New Zealander Warren Gatland, has a poor record against his home country and his counterpart Steve Hansen.

Gatland is 0-7 coaching Wales against the All Blacks and 0-5 against Hansen, including three tests just last year, rounded out by a 40-point mauling in Dunedin.

The Lions aren't Wales, sure. But Gatland is their coach and 12 Welshman make up his squad of 41.

There are two Scots, 17 are Englishmen (who haven't played the All Blacks since 2014) and just 11 Irishmen, despite the men in green beating the All Blacks and England in the past eight months.

It matters little though who Gatland selects, the All Blacks have won 17 and lost just two tests against the home nations since Hansen took over in 2012.

The Lions combined talent could be their strength but also their undoing. The Welsh players often dislike the English, who in turn don't respect a Welsh coach. The Irish are happy to be there and are keen to play out to prove more of their countrymen should have been picked, and the Scots are bitter that just two of them were picked despite finishing above Wales in the Six Nations.

And when do you give your top team time to gel? If they play all the games before the first test they'll burnout, but they need the time to develop combinations. Another conundrum.

Those who cringe at my bullishness will point to the All Blacks' traditionally slow start to the season as a cause for concern. Balderdash. With the All Blacks shaking off the rust against Samoa, the Lions chances of survival are as slim as a bowl of saveloys surrounded by a pack of half-starved huntaways.

Former Wales and Lions great Phil Bennett believes the size of the challenge facing the Lions is unprecedented.

"Without a doubt, beating the All Blacks in their back yard, in the form they've been in for the past four or five years would be astounding.

"I watched the Wales series in June last year in New Zealand and Wales lived with the All Blacks for 30-40-50 minutes and then in the last 20-30 minutes the All Blacks just opened out and they played rugby like I haven't seen before, and when you lose the players of the likes of Dan Carter and Richie McCaw and players just come in and they just carry on winning and moving the game forward, it's just incredible.

"If Warren Gatland and the Lions do beat them, with all those midweek murderous games, then it would go down as one of the greatest achievements, easily bettering that of 1971 Lions (the only Lions team to win a series in NZ) and equalling or bypassing what England did in winning the World Cup in 2003."

Winger JJ WIlliams, who played alongside Bennett on the 77 Lions tour of New Zealand, said a Lions series win this year would be phenomenal.

"It would be regarded as one of the greatest achievements in Britain, certainly in rugby but in all sports, it's a huge event, to go into the Lions den and beat the world champions in the back yard will be an extremely tough task.

"In 1971 the Lions caught the All Blacks a little bit cold. Now these Lions are going to New Zealand when New Zealand rugby is really at a real high, they've won back to back world cups, they're dominating Super Rugby so it's going to be even more difficult (than 1971).

"I consider if the Lions win this tour it will be the greatest series win by a Lions team ever, but I can't see it happening.

"The All Blacks always find a way to win that's what they always do, I've been close to beating them many times with the Lions and Wales in Cardiff and they always just beat us, that's what makes the All Blacks so different to any other team in the world, they have that innate ability to pull it out of the fire when they need it most.

"I think that's what will happen again this tour it's a good Lions team going there, people over here (Britain) are saying that the Lions could win this series 2-1 or something like that but I don't see it like that, I think in New Zealand the players, the team, that black jersey has something special that they daren't lose, and that's how I see it going."

As for the All Blacks injury woes, they're hardly worth losing sleep over.

Take skipper Kieran Read, Jerome Kaino, Dane Coles, Ben Smith, Israel Dagg, Liam Squire, Sonny Bill Williams and others who are injured or short of rugby out of the All Blacks and they'll still beat these Lions, Hansen's relentless pursuit of depth will ensure that.

Lose those guys and you've still got Ardie Savea, Sam Cane, Nathan Harris, Waisake Naholo, Jordie Barrett, Reiko Ioane, Damien McKenzie, Vince Aso, the list goes on.

Fringe players have consistently been inducted into the All Blacks environment for that very reason - if a first choice player falls over, and the second, and the third, the fourth in line still knows the AB's game plan and can slot in and 'focus on their role' relatively seamlessly.

The All Blacks 'C' team against the Lions, now that might even things up.

And mark my words, the Lions harrowing schedule will leave plenty of Gatland's gang in the infirmary, and their depth is decidedly less desirable.

You may call me a foolhardy big mouth. You may accuse me of jinxing the All Blacks or having no real understanding of the challenge the Lions present.

However, it wasn't bravado or delusion that led me to this conclusion. It was cold hard logic.

All Blacks 3, Lions nil.