Many British & Irish Lions fans have spent this week debating, discussing and decompressing from what they saw in Melbourne at Uluru, the vast sandstone monolith sacred to Indigenous Australians.

Over the last couple of days, they have started arriving to form a red centre of their own in Sydney's Circular Quay while preparing to watch another ‘rock’ in equal awe — Tadhg Furlong.

Furlong will make his ninth Test start on his third Lions Tour at Accor Stadium on Saturday. He may not be a natural wonder of the world, but he has enjoyed another wonderful Tour in Andy Farrell’s bruising front row.

Once described by Joe Marler as a 'massive lump', the 32-year-old has spent the last month underlining just why Farrell has so much faith in him.

Australia head coach Joe Schmidt gave Furlong his Ireland debut and described him - with more than a hint of understatement - as 'a pain in the neck'.

“If he wants a day off on Saturday, I would be happy to see that,” he joked.

“The first time I met him, he came into my office with his mum and dad at the Leinster academy. He blocked the sun briefly and those shoulders haven’t got any smaller."

Nicknamed Jukebox — because 'the hits keep coming' — Furlong and his Leinster colleagues Andrew Porter and Dan Sheehan have set the tone with raw and brutish physicality in Australia.

Furlong equals Wales’s Alun Wyn Jones in starting nine consecutive Lions Test matches. Only the legendary RH Williams, Tony O'Reilly, Graham Price and Willie John McBride have made more, leaving Furlong’s Lions legend status secure.

The Ireland prop first went on Tour in 2017 with fewer than 20 caps, and his Lions record is remarkable considering career long battles with calf and hamstring injuries.

He played only eight games for Leinster this season and once for Ireland, though his workload in red has been considerable - featuring in seven of the ten matches and starting five.

“He’s had to adapt his training and how he looks after himself. He’s unbelievably diligent in all of that, a real professional," said Farrell

“The nature of a Tour like this works in someone like Tadhg’s favour because you have to just roll with the punches of what’s thrown in front of you.”

There is a tendency to think of Furlong’s game as all ferocity, played on the edge, but there is nuance to a player who has helped reimagine the art and craft of front-row play, earning three selections for World Rugby's Team of the Year.

Schmidt still recalls the deft offload he gave Bundee Aki to set up a CJ Stander try for Ireland at Twickenham eight years ago.

Then, during the first Test in Brisbane, Farrell gave a knowing nod as Furlong brilliantly pinged a pass wide to the right like an agile scrum-half, setting up another attacking phase.

And then there was as the high-stepping run against Scotland in a Six Nations match. 'Furlong's a back in a prop's body' shouted the accompanying viral video to his fancy footwork.

“The difference with the Lions tour is you get match-fit by just playing rugby, two games a week, that's always nice,” said Furlong.

“For me, the lack of training on this tour is great for my body because you come to the game fresh. In my career, I’ve had a lot of overload injuries.

"I’ve had a fractured enough season, coming into this but you can’t beat playing the game.

"When you are not really training a whole lot and just playing rugby and it’s good for me.

"I'm still learning, my body is changing and I have to do keep on top of lots of stuff, just to stay on the pitch.

"I've grown up as a player with the Lions. When I went to my first Tour, I probably didn't take it all in enough.

"Being on a third Tour is just an absolute bonus and you realise how privileged you are, just being part of it."

Furlong grew up on a farm in Horeswood, County Wexford, where his father James, who played as a prop for New Ross RFC, looked after approximately 30 cows across 60 acres.

As a youngster, he combined rugby with Gaelic football and hurdling until his mid-teens while he attended Good Counsel College and turned out for Horeswood GAA club.

Despite working on the family farm, Furlong joked his size, strength and power comes from his genes rather than his workload, and that was always going to see him end up on the rugby field.

“I think I learned quite young that my body shape probably lends more to rugby than it does to hurling," he said.

The GAA's loss is the Lions gain - and ultimately, in recent weeks, the Wallabies pain.