Eddie Jones offers Warren Gatland a radical four-captain plan for his British and Irish Lions tour

The England coach believes all four national team captains could tour New Zealand, with the best then going on to lead the Lions Test squad

Eddie Jones believes Warren Gatland could choose to take all four national team captains on the Lions tour (Getty)

Eddie Jones has offered a solution to Warren Gatland’s British and Irish Lions captaincy dilemma, by suggesting he chooses four skippers for the tour of New Zealand.

Jones has opened up on his view of the Lions since the end of the Six Nations at the weekend, with the England head coach no longer tasked with trying to win a second consecutive title after retaining the championship this year.

Having kept hush on this summer’s Lions tour throughout the six-week championship, Jones has now spoke openly about how the All Blacks are “there for the taking”, and offered his view on the captaincy debate with a fairly radical solution.

He suggested taking all four national team captains and making them a core leadership group on the tour, with England’s Dylan Hartley, Ireland’s Rory Best, Scotland’s Greig Laidlaw and Wales’s Alun Wyn Jones all in the reckoning.

"I would take those four captains and make that the leadership group," Jones said, speaking to ESPN at the Advertising Week Europe business event in London.

"Then after the warm-up games, whoever was the leading player I would make captain for the first Test.

"You look at the last Lions tour and Sam Warburton captained the first two and Alun Wyn Jones captained the third, so I think you can separate it.

"It would be different but I would reckon you would get a great result, with those four captains running the team for you and making sure they set the standards on and off the field."

Jones’s suggestion does come with its issues though, given there is plenty of doubt around Hartley and Laidlaw’s inclusion in the tour as players alone. Hartley is facing stiff competition from Best, Ken Owens of Wales and fellow England hooker Jamie George, while Laidlaw will need to oust one of Conor Murray, Rhys Webb and Ben Youngs, with the respective Irish, Welsh and English scrum-halves looking the front-runners for a place among the tour squad.

Gatland, who will name his squad on 19 April, admitted that being the captain does not result in an automatic place in his starting Test squad. "I think the captaincy is a great honour, but whoever the captain is going to be there'll be no guarantee he plays in the Tests," Gatland said on BBC Radio Five Live's Sportsweek programme on Sunday.

"His form has to be good enough. I think whoever that person is has to rise to that, the message to that person is it's a great honour to captain the Lions but your form has to be good enough to be selected for the Tests.

"For the other players in that position I'll be having the same conversation as well. You say 'if your form is good enough and you play better than the captain, then there's every opportunity you can play in the Tests'."