In response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has completely shut down any rugby activity for the foreseeable future, British & Irish Lions head coach Warren Gatland has suggested his side take on the All Blacks before the Lions 2021 tour to South Africa for a rubber match decider. 

The Lions' most recent tour in 2017 was a historic trip to New Zealand, where after three grueling battles the two sides finished the series with one win a piece, and a draw in the final encounter. 

Seeing that World Rugby and rugby all across the globe will miss out on significant financial opportunities during the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lions boss thinks staging a fourth and final match as a "warm-up" for the South Africa tour would help to somewhat alleviate the situation. He estimates the game would raise somewhere in the ballpark of four to five million pounds to mitigate the damage done by the corona outbreak. 

Gatland, who in November stepped down from his role as head coach of Wales after 12 years to become the Chiefs new coach, thinks this layoff could also be a time for World Rugby to assess the global playing calendar and look at potential alternatives moving forward. 

In a conversation with Sky Sports New Zealand, he had this to say:

"I think there's potentially some opportunities for the world to come together in terms of how we get up and running again and generate as much potential revenue as we possibly can so that we don't damage what we've got.

"Looking at it, there's lots of different things going forward. In the November period, if the games in July and August are going to be called off, do the southern hemisphere teams go up to the northern hemisphere and play in a round-robin tournament where there's revenue sharing?

"I think potentially there's an opportunity to earn about £20million for each Home Nation if they did something like that."

How the powers-that-be decide to move forward remains unknown, but for fans the sure likelihood is that everyone would love to see the All Blacks and the Lions finish what had been an all-time great series of rugby.