Could more Irish players still decamp for coveted Lions duty?

Jamie Osborne is the latest to swap green for red down under. Picture: Ben Brady/Inpho

Lisbon marks the season's finishing line for the men in green. Or does it?

The likelihood is that every man jack of Paul O’Connell’s Ireland squad will be able to pack their sun cream and shorts and make for the beach safe in the knowledge that there will be no urgent phone calls from Australia.

But the British and Irish Lions have already suffered some misfortune and sounded the SOS more times than they would have liked. It’s not beyond the bounds of reason that someone involved here in Iberia could have their season’s duties extended yet.

Craig Casey brought some excellent form into the role as new Irish captain and has shown strong leadership in Georgia and Portugal. Ryan Baird’s displays with Leinster at the season’s end were epic and he impressed again in Tbilisi. Tommy O’Brien is on fire.

There has already been one among their number diverted southwards.

Ireland captain Casey was actually in a taxi in the Portuguese capital with Jamie Osborne when the Naas man got the call from Oz this week. It was, said the Munster scrum-half, a “fairly class moment” for a player who has made a habit of climbing rungs on the ladder.

Finlay Bealham (left) apparently cried after hearing news of his call up to the Lions squad. File picture: Robbie Stephenson/PA

“I don’t think there’s another player in the four isles (sic) who can play every position in the backline and do it as well as he does. I think it’s absolutely savage and it’s a credit to how well he’s performed over the last year for Ireland.

“I think it’s only a year since he got his [Ireland] debut and in the team room [on Thursday night] night we made a big deal out of it.”

Lions tours have thrown up plenty of notable, belated call-ups.

Think of the Geography Six in New Zealand in 2017. Or Ulster’s Tom Court who was on holiday on Australia’s north coast in 2013 when a carrier pigeon went looking for him to link up with Warren Gatland’s crew before the final midweek game against the Queensland Reds.

Think of Andy Nicol who, in 2001, was acting as a tour guide for a party of Lions fans in Sydney when a scrum-half emergency forced Ian McGeechan’s hands and the Scottish nine ended up on the bench for the third and critical Test at Stadium Australia.

Finlay Bealham is another current Irish squad member to have already answered the late call from Andy Farrell this time around. Farrell revealed later that the Connacht prop had blubbed his heart out at the news that he would be swapping green for red. And Osborne?

“Nah, he didn’t cry,” Casey laughed. “He just didn’t talk for the rest of the journey so I’m not sure if that’s normal or not! He was very quiet in himself.”