DOUBLE standards are flying around in Welsh rugby to the bitter end, and this time the victims are the British Lions.

After spending a great deal of the season arguing for a break between internationals, the ball is back in Wales coach Graham Henry's court.

He wants his players right through the Six Nations championship - without having to play hard club games with the risk of injury in between.

He is busy trying to create a gap in the domestic programme so that he will, in fact, have his players completely at his disposal.

Yet, wearing his other hat as coach of the British Lions in Australia this summer, what happens?

With just 10 days to go before departure Down Under, Wales are playing the Barbarians at the Millennium Stadium.

Surely, Wales will not pick their Lions squad so near to leaving.

Surely they won't want their top players to risk injury and miss the tour of a lifetime to take on the Australians in their own back yard.

Not a bit of it. The intention is to play all of Wales' 10 Lions against the Baabaas.

That blows a huge hole in Henry's demands that his players don't get involved close to an international.

What is good enough for Wales flies right out of the window when it comes to the Lions.

The hand of Henry's employers, the Welsh Rugby Union, is at work in all this, of course. It would be wouldn't it?

The fact is the WRU is hard up for cash, desperately hard up.

They have got a massive Millennium Stadium debt to service in the first place.

Add to that they have lost the home game with Ireland, albeit temporarily and on top of that they have had to lay another pitch for Saturday's FA Cup final at a further cost of £100,000.

So they need a full house or as near as possible for the match against the Baabaas.

The only way to do that is to pick the strongest possible team for the May 20 game, and to hell with the Lions.

It means that an already tired squad will be even more shattered when they have to represent the best of British against the world champions.

Whereas Australia will be fresh at the start of a new season, many of the Lions will have slogged through a long, hard season here and will even be playing 10 days before departure.

Compare that with days gone by when players stopped and even missed cup finals once a Lions tour party was announced.

The game may be professional now and it may be run as a business, but isn't this all going a bit too far?

Players are being flogged so much that any chances of winning the series Down Under are receding by the day.

Given the lack of rugby played across the Irish Sea - because of the foot-and-mouth crisis - maybe it would have been better to pack the Lions tour party with Irishmen rather than English and Welsh players.