The tourists are favourites against Australia, who need everything to go their way if they are to compete in this series

There is nothing that can compare to running out for a British & Irish Lions Test for the first time. I was speaking to Andy Farrell this week and I was getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Running out on to the field, the noise, the energy, the stakes – it’s completely different from anything those players will have experienced before. It’s a new chemical stimulus and in conversation with Farrell I was immediately transported back to Durban and 2009.

For all the sports psychology, visualisation and every bit of preparation you can do, it’s still different. It changed the way I warmed up. I made sure I got out on to the field early just to be able to absorb it. You are not a spectator when the whistle goes, you’re not looking around thinking: “This is cool”. That’s for the fans, so I would go out early to feel it, to sense it and just get used to it.

The tourists are favourites against Australia, who need everything to go their way if they are to compete in this series

There is nothing that can compare to running out for a British & Irish Lions Test for the first time. I was speaking to Andy Farrell this week and I was getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Running out on to the field, the noise, the energy, the stakes – it’s completely different from anything those players will have experienced before. It’s a new chemical stimulus and in conversation with Farrell I was immediately transported back to Durban and 2009.

For all the sports psychology, visualisation and every bit of preparation you can do, it’s still different. It changed the way I warmed up. I made sure I got out on to the field early just to be able to absorb it. You are not a spectator when the whistle goes, you’re not looking around thinking: “This is cool”. That’s for the fans, so I would go out early to feel it, to sense it and just get used to it.

State of domestic rugby union is at crossroads and the 2037 Lions tour operators may end up having their heads turned

The chatter may be mostly coming from British press, but its volume and repetition has made it impossible to ignore. About whether the Wallabies are worthy adversaries for the British & Irish Lions ahead of the first Test in Brisbane on Saturday. Whether Australia – especially without the injured duo Rob Valetini and Will Skelton – will muster much, if any, resistance.

Whether the mostly one-sided warm-up matches have provided the preparation the Lions would have liked or the spectators deserved. Whether, even, Lions officials should entertain interest from continental Europe, or South America, before committing to another tour to Australia in 2037.

We should be able to discuss the different ways in which minorities are racialised in a thoughtful – and sometimes confronting – way

The late broadcaster and campaigner Darcus Howe and Tottenham MP Bernie Grant once fell out over a hot-seat discussion on the former’s current affairs programme, The Devil’s Advocate, broadcast on Channel 4. Grant had provoked backlash from the Black press for discussing state-funded “voluntary repatriation” (a return of migrant and migrant descendant groups to their country of heritage) at a fringe event at the Labour party conference in 1993. Provided an opportunity by Howe to walk back on these comments, he doubled down, suggesting that Black people had “no future in Europe”.

Howe viewed Grant’s position as retrograde, and questioned how a British MP could advocate for a future outside Britain. Grant would complain to Channel 4 about the programme, fearing that it had ruined his political career. But it did not. Despite being abandoned by his Black parliamentary colleagues and only finding mixed support against major rebuke, he remained a respected political figure, and Labour MP, until his death in 2000.

Jason Okundaye is an assistant newsletter editor and writer at the Guardian. He edits The Long Wave newsletter and is the author of Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Claims involve former finance minister Cristóbal Montoro and dealings with gas and other energy companies

Just when Spain’s opposition People’s party thought it had the socialist government of Pedro Sánchez on the ropes over a series of corruption scandals, it has been hit by a controversy of its own over alleged trafficking of influences by Cristóbal Montoro, the former finance minister.

It is alleged that Montoro established the “economic team”, a lawyer’s office linked to the finance ministry, which took kickbacks from gas and other energy companies in return for favourable government policy. It is claimed that between 2008 and 2015 Montoro and 27 other accused, among them senior treasury officials, were paid at least €11m (£9.5m) by big energy companies.

Ben Stiller, Rachel Zegler and Judd Apatow and others disappointment at decision to axe long-running show

• The end of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is a concerning nail in the coffin for comedy

Celebrities have expressed disappointment and anger at the controversial decision to end the long-running Late Show, bringing an end to host Stephen Colbert’s award-winning tenure.

The late-night comedy show has been on CBS for 33 years and the news arrived just days after Colbert called out the network’s parent company Paramount for settling a “frivolous” lawsuit with Donald Trump for $16m. Paramount is seeking approval for a $8.4bn merger with Skydance, a company ran by David Ellison, son of close Trump ally Larry Ellison.