How will the Lions coaches slice up Tour of duties?

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I have!’ That was my first memory of big Faz,” the England attack coach recalled on Wednesday after being named one of Farrell’s five assistants for this summer’s British & Irish Lions tour to Australia.

Farrell did not need to be so persuasive when he went looking for Wigglesworth, inset, 15 years later to offer him a place on his coaching staff alongside Scotland forwards coach John Dalziel and Ireland trio Simon Easterby, John Fogarty, and Andrew Goodman.

“I bit his hand off before he needed to do any convincing,” the 41-year-old said. “I love a challenge and they don’t get any better than this one. I can’t wait to get stuck in.”

There was one objector to the offer, as Wigglesworth explained as he described taking Farrell’s call nine days earlier. “I was back on dad duty after the Six Nations and my five-year-old Margot was wanting to play outside, so I was kicking the ball around with her and saw Faz’s name pop up and thought, best answer this, and she wasn’t happy.

“He was obviously wittering on a bit so she wasn’t happy with how long the conversation was but he eventually got to it and asked me and, yeah, I think it was a fair few expletives and some other stuff but, yeah, incredible moment.

“Incredibly proud to get the call and I think we all just can’t wait to get going to work with this group of players. We started talking about the players yesterday and we’ve got some serious talent that we get to work with and hopefully we can help them play as well as we can and come a great outcome.”

Wigglesworth had already been a Premiership champion with Sale but added a second with Farrell on the Saracens coaching staff before he moved to Stuart Lancaster’s backroom ticket in 2012.

Four more league titles and three Champions Cup winner’s medals would follow with Saracens during his 10-year spell at the club, before a move to Leicester Tigers in 2020 saw the No.9 win another Premiership, under Steve Borthwick.

Now his boss with England, Borthwick told Wigglesworth his own stint as a Lions assistant, alongside Farrell in 2017, was one of the best experiences he had ever had and, eight years later, the attack coach is relishing the opportunity, not least working once more with Farrell.

“As you’d expect with someone as elite as that, they keep growing and getting better,” Wigglesworth said of the Lions head coach.

“From what I have seen so far and know speaking to the coaches, he is incredible at what he does. I am looking forward to working with him.”

Farrell has resisted the temptation to define rigid roles for his assistants and though their respective national team roles suggest areas of expertise, Wigglesworth will be one of two attack coaches on tour, with New Zealander Goodman named alongside the Englishman.

“We’re just going to work together and slice it up however it looks in weeks to come, Wigglesworth said. “Nothing’s set in stone yet but Andy wants us across all areas together, the opposite of what working in silos looks like.

“He wants us as cohesive as possible. I’m certainly looking forward to that.”

Like all the Lions coaching staff ahead of their final selection meeting before the playing squad is announced in London on May 8. Wigglesworth will have a scouting brief at Premiership, URC, French Top 14, and Champions Cup matches for the next six weeks.

While he has made it his business to rewatch the Six Nations matches through a less Red Rose-tinted lens, he also insisted his role in the coaching group was not to bang the drum for England players.

“No. I’m a Lions coach. My responsibility is to every player from the British Isles and Ireland, to work as hard as I can to get up to speed with their strengths and what they could bring.

“I’ll definitely go back and watch them from a different point of view. I was attack coach so looking a lot at how they were defending and what it looks like. I’ll go back and look.

“When you are watching, you think you are getting a flavour of it, but the beauty of the coaching team is that we’ve got guys from different spots, so you can pick their brains on what they are like. I’m looking forward to doing that.”