Behind The Lions E-Book

Stephen Jones

• Herausgeber: Polaris
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Serie: Behind the Jersey
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 1119

Beschreibung

For over 130 years the British & Irish Lions have stood out as a symbol of the ethics, values and romance at the heart of rugby union. To represent the Lions is the pinnacle for every international player in Britain and Ireland, and the dream of tens of thousands of avid fans who fol-low them. A Lions tour, undertaken every four years to the southern hemisphere, is more than a series of rugby matches played out on foreign fields; it is an epic crusade where the chosen few face a succession of mental and physical chal-lenges on their way to the Test arena, where they do battle with the superpowers of the world game. Behind the Lions sees seven esteemed rugby writers delve to the very heart of what it means to be a Lion, using diaries and letters from those who pioneered the concept, to interviews with a vast array of players who have followed in their footsteps. In so doing they have uncovered the passion, pride and honour experienced when taking up the unique challenge of a Lions tour. This is a tale of heart-break and ecstasy, humour and poignancy that is at once inspirational, moving and utterly compelling. And it is the only story worth hearing: the players' own.

Leseprobe

‘A fascinating collection of insights . . .

both heart-warming and enthralling’

THE SUNDAY TIMES

RUGBY WORLD

‘a magical history’

DAILY TELEGRAPH

‘comfortably the most interesting and

entertaining history of the Lions’

THE IRISH TIMES

‘A priceless store of material’

THE SCOTSMAN

‘utterly compelling’

PLANET RUGBY

BEHIND THE

LIONS

PLAYING RUGBY FOR THE

BRITISH & IRISH LIONS

STEPHEN JONES, TOM ENGLISH,

NICK CAIN & DAVID BARNES

with

PETER BURNS, JOHN GRIFFITHS & ROSS HARRIES

This fourth edition published in 2021 by

POLARIS PUBLISHING LTD

c/o Aberdein Considine

2nd Floor, Elder House

Multrees Walk

Edinburgh

EH1 3DX

Distributed by

ARENA SPORT

An imprint of Birlinn Limited

www.polarispublishing.com

Text copyright © Stephen Jones, Tom English, Nick Cain, David Barnes, Peter Burns, John Griffiths and Ross Harries, 2013, 2016 and 2021

ISBN: 9781913538170

eBook ISBN: 9780857905291

First edition published 2013

Second edition published 2014

Third edition published 2016

The right of Stephen Jones, Tom English, Nick Cain, David Barnes, Peter Burns, John Griffiths and Ross Harries to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

The views expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or policies of Polaris Publishing Ltd (Company No. SC401508) (Polaris), nor those of any persons, organisations or commercial partners connected with the same (Connected Persons). Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed by third parties are not those of Polaris or any Connected Persons but those of the third parties. For the avoidance of doubt, neither Polaris nor any Connected Persons assume any responsibility or duty of care whether contractual, delictual or on any other basis towards any person in respect of any such matter and accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by any such matter in this book.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Polaris Publishing, Edinburgh

Printed in Great Britain by MBM Print, East Kilbride

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank everyone who has given their time so generously to assist in the preparation of this book. Those whom we interviewed are too many to name individually but their thoughts are included in these pages and we would like to thank them for giving so generously of their time and for being so honest about their great ups and downs with the Lions.

Special thanks must go to the following for their expert help in the production of this book: Rob Cole and his colleagues at the Westgate Sports Agency for their input with Lions history and the Welsh element of Lions touring history; Adam Hathaway of the People, rugby and cricket expert; and to Clem and Greg Thomas for their wonderful book, The History of the British & Irish Lions.

Thanks also to the team at Polaris for all their work in bringing this project together.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Stephen Jones is the award-winning rugby correspondent of The Sunday Times and a former UK sports journalist of the year. He is the author of several books on the sport, including Lion Man: The Autobiography of Ian McGeechan, Midnight Rugby: Triumph and Shambles in the Professional Era, and Endless Winter: The Inside Story of the Rugby Revolution, which was the winner of the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. He is also co-author of and Behind the Rose: Playing Rugby for England.

Tom English is an award-winning BBC Sport writer and broadcaster. A former Irish rugby correspondent with the Sunday Times and chief sports writer with Scotland on Sunday, he was voted Scottish Sports Feature Writer of the Year six times. He has twice won Rugby Book of the Year at the British Sports Book Awards – for The Grudge in 2010 and for No Borders in 2016 – and is the co-author of the critically-acclaimed, When Lions Roared: The Lions, the All Blacks and the Legendary Tour of 1971.

Nick Cain is a rugby columnist for The Sunday Times and chief writer for The Rugby Paper. He edited Rugby World magazine for nine years, and is the co-author of The Lions Diary with Jeremy Guscott, Rugby Union for Dummies and Behind the Rose: Playing Rugby for England.

David Barnes is a freelance journalist, covering rugby for various newspapers, and runs The Offside Line rugby website. He is the co-author of Jim Renwick’s autobiography, Centre of Excellence and Behind the Thistle: Playing Rugby for Scotland.

Peter Burns is the author of seven books, including When Lions Roared: The Lions, the All Blacks and the Legendary Tour of 1971, Behind the Thistle: Playing Rugby for Scotland, Behind the Ryder Cup: The Players’ Stories and White Gold: England’s Journey to World Cup Glory.

John Griffiths is Britain’s foremost rugby historian and has worked as consultant on numerous books on the subject as well as authoring many himself, including British Lions, Rugby’s Strangest Matches and Rugby’s Greatest Characters.

Ross Harries is regularly seen presenting the BBC’s international rugby coverage, BBC Wales’ Scrum V and Scrum V Live programmes, Premier Sports’ Pro14 coverage and is a regular voice on BBC radio. He co-wrote Bomb: My Autobiography with Adam Jones and he is the author of critically-acclaimed Behind the Dragon: Playing Rugby for Wales.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: CRUSADERS

ONE: 1888–1904: PATHFINDERS

TWO: 1908–1938: THE CULTURE CLASH

THREE: 1950: THE FLYING LION

FOUR: 1955: LORDS OF AFRICA

FIVE: 1959: KINGS OF RUGBY

SIX: 1962: DECLINING FORTUNES

SEVEN: 1966: LAND OF THE LONG DARK CLOUD

EIGHT: 1968: LEARNING THE LESSONS

NINE: 1971: THE HISTORY BOYS

TEN: 1974: THE INVINCIBLES

ELEVEN: 1977: HISTORY IN REVERSE

TWELVE: 1980: EXTERNAL PRESSURES APPLY

THIRTEEN: 1983: MONTHS OF MELANCHOLY

FOURTEEN: 1989: THE COMEBACK KINGS

FIFTEEN: 1993: THE TWILIGHT OF THE AMATEUR

SIXTEEN: 1997: GLORY DAYS

SEVENTEEN: 2001: THE NEARLY MEN

EIGHTEEN: 2005: BLACKOUT

NINETEEN: 2009: OLD SCHOOL VALUES

TWENTY: 2013: WARBURTON’S WARRIORS

TWENTY-ONE: 2017: SHARING THE SPOILS

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SOURCES

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The pioneer Lions set sail for New Zealand and Australia in 1888.

The first ever Test match between Great Britain and South Africa, in Port Elizabeth in 1891.

The 1904 tour party, led by one of the great forwards of the age, David (Darkie) Bedell-Sivright.

The 1930 Lions are in good spirits as they meet at Waterloo Station before departure for New Zealand.

Action from the 1955 Lions’ match against Western Province at Newlands, Cape Town, which the tourists won 11–3.

Peter Jackson scores the Lions’ second try against Auckland in a 15–10 victory at Eden Park in 1959.

Alun Pask reaches out to score a spectacular try against Western Province at Newlands in 1962.

Dewi Bebb speeds around Ron Rangi in the second Test against the All Blacks in 1966. The hosts emerged victorious in this match in Wellington – and trumphed 4–0 overall in the series.

Gareth Edwards and Billy Raybould practise their dive passes during the 1968 tour to South Africa.

The great Carwyn James during training in 1971. James was the genius behind the Lions’ only series victory against New Zealand in history. Getty Images

Barry John – ‘The King’ – glides through the All Blacks’ defence in 1971. Getty Images

The Invincibles: Willie John McBride’s 1974 tour party. Getty Images

Willie John McBride calls a lineout during the fourth Test in 1974. FotoSport

‘Mud Man’ Fran Cotton: the iconic photograph from the 1977 tour to New Zealand. Colorsport

1980 tour captain, Bill Beaumont, rises high to win a lineout against Western Province. The 37–6 victory was part of a clean-sweep against the South African provinces, but the Sprinboks would prove to be a far harder opposition to overcome in the Test series. Getty Images

Roy Laidlaw and Dave Loveridge in the aftermath of the fourth Test in 1983.

Ieuan Evans screams in delight as he scores the try that clinches the third Test – and the series against Australia – in 1989. Getty Images

Lions captain, Gavin Hastings, and All Blacks captain, Sean Fitzpatrick, swap shirts after the deciding third Test in 1993. Fitzpatrick takes receipt of the shield that was made for the series winner. InphoPhotography

Jeremy Guscott cements his place in Lions legend with his series-winning drop goal against South Africa in 1997. FotoSport

Waltzing O’Driscoll: Brian O’Driscoll breaks through the Wallaby defence on his way to scoring the try of the series in 2001. InphoPhotography

Just minutes into the first Test in Christchurch, 2005 captain O’Driscoll is injured out of the series. InphoPhotography

The Lions line up before the first Test in Durban in 2009, with a sea of red in the stands behind them. It was the first match in what would prove to be a brutal Test series against the world champion Springboks. FotoSport

Mike Phillips celebrates his try against the Springbok in Durban in 2009. InphoPhotography

Simon Shaw was magnificent in the autumn of his career, saving his very best performances for the 2009 Lions. Here he takes on Chiliboy Ralepelle and Victor Matfield in the third Test. FotoSport

Ugo Monye celebrates his try during the third Test in 2009, a victory that many saw as being crucial to securing the future viability of the Lions. InphoPhotography

In an iconic moment from the 2013 second Test, George North lifts Wallaby Israel Folau while carrying the ball. Getty Images

Jamie Roberts is mobbed by team mates Conor Murray, Owen Farrell and George North after scoring the Lions’ fourth try in Sydney. Getty Images

The 2013 Lions squad celebrate their first series win in sixteen years. Getty Images

Sean O’Brien finishes off one of the all-time great Lions’ tries during the first Test against the All Blacks in Auckland, 2017. InphoPhotography

A series-changing moment in the second Test in Wellington: Sonny Bill Williams is sent from the field for his dangerous tackle on Anthony Watson. InphoPhotography

Conor Murray dives over to score after a scything break by Jamie George in the second Test. InphoPhotography

All Blacks captain, Kieran Read, and Lions captain, Sam Warburton, lift the 2017 series trophy together after their extraordinary 1–1 draw. InphoPhotography

INTRODUCTION

CRUSADERS

Lions tours, in their concept and their execution, have an incredible ability to thunder across different eras in life and sport and remain, for elite players and loving followers of every kind, the top of the game.

They have toured in three separate centuries, and at every point in their history have been feted wherever they landed. For so long it was an amateur undertaking and so when the game went professional in 1995 some predicted the end of the Lions. Two years later, Ian McGeechan and Martin Johnson led one of the greatest of all Lions tours to victory in South Africa.

Competing demands on the players have seen tours trimmed it is true, but not even the privations of the pandemic which afflicted the world in 2020, and which disrupted so much, caused any pessimism as to the future of tours. There will be glory days ahead, for sure, and teams will continue to extend the legend, while keeping the jersey warm for the next generation.

This new edition contains the reflections of the players who toured New Zealand in 2017, when the All Blacks appeared unbeatable, and yet were taken all the way in a series which ended in a draw. It was a massive confrontation and, this time, the tourists did not depart with tails between their legs but as a team on an equal standing with the greatest.

*

How and why are where did it all begin? Over 130 years ago as I write. And it sprang from one of rugby’s most important distinguishing characteristics – a wanderlust. It takes the form of a compulsion to take the sport on the road, to seek out those who play in neighbouring or distant or foreign or even alien environments, to encounter them on the field, to absorb their culture and, frankly, to have a memorable social outing away from the strains of normal life, safe in the rock-like communal solidarity of a rugby team.

And sometimes the most rewarding aspect is that once you have experienced the distant environment, perhaps even clashed harshly on the rugby field, for all the differences in culture and surroundings, you find that so much is the same. Attitudes, outlooks, affections. Experience teaches that even amongst the occasional vicissitudes of modern-day professional rugby, there are still such beings as the universal rugby man and woman, with rugby’s forgiving balances and love. You can travel 12,000 miles to discover an image of yourself.

And so the rugby tour was born. Tours began almost as soon as the sport had become recognisable and codified. Only rock music has anything like it. Even if the tour lasts only a night or two, even if it is just a whistle-stop trip to Cornwall or Devon or the Lake District or Cork or the Scottish Borders or West Wales at Easter, then it has traits in common with even the longest tour. The luckier schools and junior clubs these days are magnificently ambitious, and how marvellously education can be topped up, and how far eyes can be widened, by the months of fundraising leading to the trip of a young lifetime. My school tour was to Newton Abbot. Another world.

In terms of distance and time spent, no activity on this planet has longer tours than rugby. At the highest levels, the wanderlust and all the other imperatives of rugby tours become simply the backdrop to a desire to take on the best rugby teams in the world. The challenge is implicit, it never has to be laid down. And it must always be accepted.

It is an accident of geography and of rugby’s history and sociology that from the standpoint of the four home rugby union countries, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the ultimate challenges are those posed by three nations up to 12,000 miles away – New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. At the top level of the game, these were, and are, the ultimate opponents. They are the destinations, in rotating sequence, for the unique, magnificent beast called the British & Irish Lions.

The first tour Down Under made by a conglomerate team from the Home Unions sailed from Gravesend on 8 March 1888. Seven more such tours were made in the following twelve years. The wanderlust of these heroic pioneer tourists was so powerful that they were driven to overcome distances and tribulations long forgotten in these days of our shrunken world and flat bed air travel. One account of the 1903 tour to South Africa, led by Mark Morrison, states that often the players were hungry. And simply to leave these shores to play was a perilous expedition.

In 1888, those pioneers – twenty-six young men chiefly from the North of England – departed on the RMS Kaikoura, a steam/sail ship with three masts, one propeller and a top speed of fifteen knots. It was still largely the age of the gentleman player, so the heroes travelled in saloon class. Also available were second saloon class, and a rather grim-sounding emigrant class.

They took seven weeks to reach Australia, sailing through what were reported as ‘heavy, confused seas’. The team was away from home for eight months. They played sixteen matches under rugby rules and, incredibly, another nineteen under Australian rules – the tour had been organised by private promoters, who needed to make money, hence the Australian rules games against the top clubs of the day. The party travelled enormous distances by stagecoach, charging around the country and stopping only for fresh teams of horses.

Given the endurance, and the privations relative to the modern day, it was no doubt a relief to so many back home when they returned – and in fact, they did not all do so. The captain, Robert Seddon, a popular, principled and gentle man, was drowned during the tour while paddling a kind of canoe with which he was not familiar. Accounts of his life, and the reaction of his touring colleagues and friends to his death, suggest strongly that here was a man who typified early the essential calibre of people who were to fill the touring jersey ever afterwards.

Tours continued regularly but it was only on the 1924 tour to South Africa, the ninth made by conglomerate parties from Britain and Ireland, that the name ‘Lions’ was applied to the touring team – simply because the official tie for that trip bore a lion motif. The early touring parties were invariably referred to after their captain (for example, Maclagan’s team to South Africa in 1891, Bedell-Sivright’s team to Australia and New Zealand in 1904).

But they were also known widely as the ‘English football team’, a reflection of the dominant influence of the foundation country on sport and life at the time, and disregarding the fact that those early tours usually contained at least a smattering (and often a significant representation) from Wales, Scotland and Ireland. In 1924, the team became known as the British Lions.

Perhaps remarkably, it has only been recently that the full and now accepted description of the team – the British & Irish Lions – has come into general usage. No one with a clue of the history of the Lions and the magnificent contribution made by Irishmen on the field of play and in all other aspects of the tour could ever believe that it took so long.

The early tours tended to be either unofficial (organised by commercial promoters) or semi-official (tolerated by the national unions). But it was not until 1910 when the team went to South Africa that they were first truly representative of the four Home Unions, with each union supplying individual players. Before that, it was all done by gentlemanly invitation, with a preponderance of Oxford Blues and gentlemen of private means. Furthermore, in those far-off days the party rarely reflected the true strength of the rugby in Britain and Ireland. There were so many reasons not to be available for tours of such length. For example, of the twenty-eight players provisionally invited to prepare for the tour of New Zealand in 1930, only nine actually embarked for New Zealand. Wilfred Sobey was injured in the first game and never played again – a distressing tradition sadly observed on several of the later tours.

It was only for the 1950 tour of New Zealand that the Lions first appeared in their familiar red shirt; until then they had worn dark blue shirts with thin red and white stripes. This change followed the blue/black colour clash of the 1930 tour to New Zealand that resulted in the All Blacks wearing white shirts for the Test series – despite the Lions’ offer to change colour. The change to red ensured that there would be no future clashes with the host nation. It was also during that tour that the Lions first played with a green flash on their socks – a recognition, at last, of their Irish contingent.

However, what does it matter? Even if every trip was not official, even if there was an ad hoc air around much of the operations of the pioneer tours, even if they did not wear Lion red, and even if the term ‘Lions’ was not used until such tours had been operating for thirty-six years, the early tours are so clearly and definitively the foundations of the grand tradition, the pathfinders, that they are true Lions in all but name and absolutely must take their place in any formal retrospective.

*

The history of the Lions is a pioneer history of sporting exploration, and also a history of travel (it is not, sadly, a story of unbroken sporting success, but we will come to that shortly). The Kaikoura, with its largely open and windswept decks, was the original vessel for the odyssey, and its passage took seven weeks. Gradually, as the steamships became more powerful, the voyages became slightly less prolonged. Lions teams of later years travelled out on such vessels as the Dunnottar Castle, then on the Union steamship Tartar; then on the Edinburgh Castle; and to New Zealand in 1950, the last time the Lions did not fly, the Stirling Castle, with the passage reduced to a mere three weeks.

Since then, they have travelled the intercontinental legs on Lockheed Constellations, on Argonauts, on Skymasters, on Boeing 707s, on DC10s, on jumbo jets and, latterly, on Boeing 777s.

They first flew on tour in 1955, on the Constellation. Clem Thomas, the magnificent flanker who became a celebrated journalist with the Observer and a Lions biographer, and whose hectic approach to life was tailor-made for a Lions tour, recalled that they refuelled in Zurich, Rome, Cairo, Khartoum, Nairobi, Entebbe and, finally, Johannesburg. Far less convenient than the fly-by-wire, long-reach jets of today. And yet somehow, ours is a world less glamorous.

Their internal travel on tour in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was made by stagecoach – the famous coach and ten – sweeping through the country to the next change of horses. In South Africa, they travelled miles by Cape carts, and one account mentioned ‘rough unmade roads with endless corrugations’. And then later by giant steam engines hauling them through the wilderness areas of South Africa by night. It is easy to imagine the terror felt by the more reserved tourists in 1968 in South Africa, when the boisterous ‘Wreckers’ were heard coming compartment-by-compartment down the train in the dead of night, laying waste to the fixtures and fittings as the other faction, the ‘Kippers’, prepared for the worst.

It is impossible not to mention that such damage was a feature of many tours, and of rugby everywhere in previous eras. John Reason, the late rugby scribe, once wrote that this was all a legacy of the public school days when people always knew that whatever their bad behaviour, ‘Daddy would pay up’.

Then the internal travel took to the air – successive Lions teams travelled on Dakota DC3s, then on Fokker Friendships, then on Boeing 737s, and some on the frequently windy and bumpy flights around New Zealand must have understood just a little of the sense of unease that the pioneers experienced as they cast off into the unknown.

*

The tour of New Zealand by the British & Irish Lions of 2017 was the thirtieth in what has become the most magnificent sequence anywhere in sport, a concept, a crusade and a brand – to use the modern term – of towering significance. There are many who note the size and prominence of the World Cup, introduced in rugby in 1987 and which now dominates the sport, but who will always see the Lions as the summit; indeed, after the much-feared transition from the amateur era to professionalism, the Lions are now healthier than ever.

But how could a tradition, and a concept, which began in 1888 possibly be still so thunderously relevant in 2017, so much so that, if anything, the Lions as a golden gladiatorial exercise and sporting brand – sorry again about the modernist tag – is actually growing?

The answer is surely that while so much has changed profoundly, so much has stayed exactly the same. It would be ridiculous to even compare tours of old with the fierce, ultra-dedicated Lions of the modern era, with all their specialist coaches, their medical teams, their analysts peering at computer screens, their mass media profile, their Facebook and Twitter networking, their commercial deals.

They do not touch their hosts and host country with such easy familiarity, or visit avidly the tourist attractions, or go anywhere much except the airport, the hotel and the training ground. It is a shame because, especially in South Africa, yet also in the slightly more reserved New Zealand and Australia, the hospitality is regularly stupendous and has often passed into legend.

In 1955 on the tour of South Africa, a rolling, glamorous epic in which the players were treated like film stars (and which really should have been turned into a film), the great Clem Thomas had been invited well in advance to stay at a farm. The farm was being bothered by a leopard, which was attacking livestock. Generously, as Thomas said, the host family held off tracking the leopard so that Thomas, their guest, could shoot it. He did not, but it was the thought that counted.

In Lions on Trek, an account of 1955, the prolific Lions author Bryn Thomas mentions a grand total of seventy-one official or semi-official functions to which members of the party were invited during the ninety-nine days that they were away from home.

Mention a cocktail party these days and the players roll their eyes in horror. It is not their fault; you can only tour in your own era.

Nowadays, Lions tours are restricted to big city stops. In previous tours they would ramble rather sedately around the country, often stopping in one-horse (or one-zebra or one-kangaroo) towns where their arrival was a seismic event, where they were treated, albeit benevolently, as beings from another planet. Before the days of mass media and blanket coverage, newsreel scraps was all either side, host or hosted, would have seen of each other. It is a shame that time can no longer be found for a stopover in Greymouth and Timaru in New Zealand, or Dubbo and Cobar in Australia, or in Oudtshoorn or Springs in South Africa.

So many differences. Yet it is amazing how many experiences the modern Lions share across the decades with the pioneers, how easily the shyness of the original gathering before the tour gives way to communal resolve in which the enmity of the home internationals are forgotten. The journalist and author John Hopkins famously described a Lions tour as ‘a cross between a mediaeval crusade and a prep school outing’. Clearly, the public school element in the parties is now considerably reduced, but otherwise the description is perfect. The bond between players suffering the difficulties of travel and strange environments in the old days must have brought them together, but so too does the shared vision and the pressure of life as a modern-day Lion.

More common experiences. During the 1888 tour, Bob Seddon was quoted as expressing the view that on tour ‘the umpire has strong leanings to the local man’, therefore instituting a cast-iron tradition which has spanned the decades in which, rightly or wrongly, the touring team have complained in private or in public about decisions by the referee. Sometimes they changed the series. No tour has ever gone without substantial or even bitter controversy.

Every tour seems to have one game that lives in infamy, when tempers boil and thuggery breaks out. Taken together as a single history, there have been far too many instances of dirty and dangerous play, and it is a welcome aspect of the professional era that thuggery has declined substantially, with the scores of cameras, the extra match officials and the citing procedures shining a spotlight on miscreants and idiots. Long past time.

Selection, with four unions promoting their own, has often been shaky, and it would be silly to pretend that all the choices of tour captain have worked out well. Some tour leaders struggled badly with the reins of leadership and should have handed them over, while other leaders were magnificent in every respect.

Every Lions tour projects near-unknowns into the limelight, and finds that more celebrated players simply do not react to the touring environment; injuries are always a factor, with the 1980 Lions in South Africa afflicted badly, and the 2009 Lions in South Africa losing two props and two centres within minutes of one Test.

One of the grandest traditions (unless it spilled over into causing damage) is socialising, even if it is far less formal these days. In past tours it was done in evening dress and with grace. Sometimes. Even now, in this monastic era, the grand old bibulous traditions established by decades of carousing Lions are still, cautiously, observed. Perhaps Rowe Harding, a member of the 1924 party which toured South Africa under Ronald Cove-Smith, spoke for them all as he tried to account for the lack of success of that team. ‘Many unkind things were said about our wining and dining,’ he said.

Even Sir Ian McGeechan, arguably the greatest figure in the history of the Lions, as player and coach, sent his players away for a drink – or even more – after they had experienced the bitter defeat of the second Test and the loss of the series in Pretoria in 2009. ‘They just needed to get away and chill out,’ he said. They did. They had their beers, came back and won the third Test in Johannesburg.

Every tour seems to have its Irishman who, while he may or may not be a wonderful player, is seen as a great tourist; this is not a negligible standing when teams are away for so long, under pressure, and need to look inside for their sustenance and morale, their diversion and humour. To be a ‘good tourist’ is to be revered today, in any rugby community. But every tour has also heard a clash of the steel, and been an epic sporting confrontation. Nothing feels quite as massive in sport as Test rugby matches between the Lions on the one hand and the All Blacks or the Wallabies or the Springboks on the other. On these occasions, the world seems to shift on its axis.

And another ‘rule’ of the Lions is that no outstanding player in Britain and Ireland is allowed by perspective to sit in the panoply of all-time greats unless he has become a great Test Lion. They have to become, as Sir Ian says, ‘The Test match animal.’ It is possible that Will Carling, the superb England centre who was so vastly influential as player and leader in the revival of English rugby in the late 1980s and early 1990s, will never be placed in the stratosphere because he did not take part in a successful series as a key player. Furthermore, he is still the only big-name player in my memory to declare that he would not be available for a Lions tour. For the overwhelming majority of players, the Lions jersey retains mystical properties; it is the Holy Grail of the sport.

*

Another aspect binding together so many tours was their amateurism. Those new to rugby may well struggle badly to understand not only why rugby was an amateur activity for so long, but why that amateurism was policed so balefully and even ferociously. Even some people who grew up with the concept find themselves similarly confused. The idea that amateurism was at the heart of the game’s unique appeal held just a little water in previous eras, but the game has discovered since that it had precious little to worry about as it stood at the barricades for 100 years.

But one defining feature of every tour until 1997 – two years after the game went open – was the tradition of painful amateurism, with players disappearing on tours lasting six months or more with a mere pittance in terms of compensation. It was not even called compensation; instead, for decades, it was called a ‘communications allowance’ presumably so that you could ring your family to check how much money you were losing.

Ironically, the first tour of all, in 1888, took place under a cloud because it was promoted privately and, therefore, it had to make money, with the promoters brokering deals with the host teams. The Home Unions viewed it with massive suspicion. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the team came from clubs in the north of England, where demands for ‘broken-time’ payments were already rising and where the grand split of 1895 between the codes was on the horizon, ruffled the feathers of the Rugby Football Union even more.

Inquests were launched, questions were asked, and at the end nothing could ever be proved; nothing concrete was ever discovered to uphold or to confound the suspicion that the first Lions of all were closet professionals. Then the unions took over the Lions, and amateurism was the enforced norm for nearly a century.

Over the years, there were some unofficial compensations. Small Welsh communities or groups of friends or local benefactors would have a collection for the local hero to make his tour. There was often a thriving trade in gifts, items of kit and match tickets, and it was never an uncommon sight in the amateur era to see the Lions duty boy anxiously shuffling tickets and notes near the main gate of grounds.

It now seems all so harmless, but in those days tour managers used to fret for hours if the scent of professionalism, even a few shillings in illegal payments, pervaded the tour. Even the smallest gift from an admiring host had to be valued to make sure that they did not consign the recipient into outer darkness. The younger rugby men and women these days may find it incredible that once, with the Lions, even to train hard was regarded as unsporting, a suspicious step towards professionalism.

Yet when the game did cross the rubicon, there were people who felt that the Lions had had their day, so inextricably linked had they always been with the concept of amateurism, of manly sacrifice, of not making sport a living.

They could not have been more wrong. The Lions were helped across the rubicon by their mighty attraction to the hosting countries. It was estimated that the 2005 Lions tour of New Zealand generated over £100 million for the host country’s economy, and these days the Lions are every bit as big a commercial machine as they are a rugby operation. It was said in 2005 that in the replica jersey market, more Lions jerseys were sold than the uniforms of Manchester United, Real Madrid or the New York Yankees, traditionally the biggest players in the market.

But it is not the invitation of outsiders which has seen the Lions grow and grow. On the 2009 Lions tour, we saw at the second Test at the gigantic Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria another modern-day confirmation of everything that the Lions have ever stood for. It was a stupendous occasion and the match ended in what neutrals, and even some South Africans, saw as a victory for South Africa that had more than a few elements of the most outrageous fortune.

But in terms of underlining an enduring appeal, the most striking aspect was when the Lions ran out into the Pretoria sunlight from the darkness of the tunnel. When they looked up, their eyes were drawn across the pitch to the giant far stand at Loftus, which runs the whole length of the side of the ground. That day, the stand was an almost unbroken, boiling sea of scarlet red with tens of thousands of British and Irish rugby followers wearing their replica jerseys – on that bank alone, there must have been at least 12,000 of them.

Despite the cost of their trip and the eventual sporting trauma, they clearly felt an urge to be present at the highest altar that a secular environment has ever constructed. Amateur? Professional? Both were water off a lion’s back.

*

There is another and rather unpalatable aspect of history that categorises far too many Lions tours together. Defeat. After early successes, the colonies tended to learn faster and train harder than the touring teams, taking a lead they were never to lose. The majority of tours came to grief then as they still usually do now – against host teams that were stronger, harder-headed, better coached and organised, uncompromising men who desired victory with more intensity. Teams who left less to chance, less to individual flair. A few Lions tours, if not many, have fragmented when the pressure of the trip exposed fault lines, usually when members of the party realised that their dreams of Test selection were to be dashed.

Before and after the Second World War, the process continued. Of the seventeen Lions tours made since Karl Mullen’s 1950 trip to New Zealand, the Lions have won the series on only four occasions – in 1971, 1974, 1989 and 1997. Otherwise, they have suffered a combination of heavy defeats, and probably even worse, narrow defeats which really should have been turned into triumphs. It would be silly to ignore the fact that wrong choices have been frequently made in terms of captains, some coaches, and many players.

Every Lions tour sets out with a pervading optimism, but it is an optimism that has rarely – except in the golden decade of the 1970s, when the Lions dominated – proved justified, and it is incumbent upon administrators in the game in the present era to study history (particularly recent history) and to conclude that in its support of the Lions, in its granting of windows for proper preparation and rest, they have hampered the team and its history. It is probably the most remarkable sign of the power of the Lions concept, that they have risen so wonderfully in stature without the precious oxygen of playing triumphs.

However, experiences cannot always be measured on a scoreboard. Surely, there are few crusaders whose sporting prowess and whose lives were not enhanced profoundly by their Lions experience. The pulse quickens two years out for all those contending to play, for all those saving to support, and for all those anxious to report, in the most magnificent arena that sport has ever built.

The memories come in torrents: great matches, controversies, great men and players, great cultures and sights and sounds and tourism and travel and life force. It might be the exultation crackling over the radio into a Welsh dawn as the 1971 Lions drew the final Test and turned history on its head to win the series against the All Blacks; the odd but addictive feeling of crushing the Springboks in 1974 and 1997; the raw pain felt in the soul when the superior 2001 and 2009 Lions lost the series in a welter of ill-fortune. The glorious day, every few years, when the wraps come off the gleaming red vehicle of dreams.

And my personal first memory: sitting in the stand at Lancaster Park in Christchurch, in a kind of jetlagged awe, watching the men in red in the flesh for the first time. The next day, we drove from the city of Christchurch, over Arthur’s Pass to tiny Greymouth, where we convened with the Lions in one hotel; they were objects of fascination, beings from another planet, and yet just like us. The mystique, fanned by the fact that they never play at home, has been diminished for many just a little because of mass communications, sports channels, rolling news and newspaper blanket coverage. But the awe remains.

Here’s to the next squad of heroes, crossing the equator on what it still the grandest crusade

Stephen Jones

ONE

PATHFINDERS

1888–1904

NEW ZEALAND, AUSTRALIA & SOUTH AFRICA

It begins with Bob Seddon, drowned in the Hunter River in New South Wales in mid-August 1888. Pathfinders, pioneers, the first of the great rugby explorers, the founding fathers of the Lions, call them what you will, but Seddon from Lancashire was their captain, their leader on a trek that began in late April and finished in early October, that went from New Zealand to Australia and back to New Zealand, that featured not just games of rugby union, but Australian Rules, too. It wasn’t a tour – it was an odyssey.

At twenty-eight, Seddon was one of the few capped players on that expedition, a veritable veteran with appearances against Wales, Ireland and Scotland in 1887. This was a travelling crew made up largely of Englishmen, drawn from Batley, Swinton and Salford, Runcorn and Rochdale and other places besides. Also included were some blow-ins from beyond England’s borders – the Burnett brothers from Hawick and the Edinburgh doctors, Brooks and Smith, both fond of a jar according to a tour diary of the time. Wales and the Isle of Man were represented. Twenty-two players in all. Many were asked not just for a commitment to the amateur ethos but a signature on an affidavit confirming that they would not accept a penny in payment.

Seddon tied it all together. Orphaned early in his life, he had found security and happiness. He departed for New Zealand knowing that when he came back he’d be married. Twenty games into the trip, and having written home to family and friends that very morning, he went on a canoeing expedition on the Hunter River with three of his teammates but continued on alone in a Gladstone skiff, a type of craft with which he was unfamiliar. He was 200 yards from dry land when he capsized. Two onlookers who could not swim watched his struggle. The grim news of his fate was relayed back to his players by way of a telegram to the Northern Hotel in Newcastle. ‘Your captain is drowned,’ it said. The effect on the team was said to be one of utter devastation.

They took him to Maitland, where he’d pulled on his boots for the final time, and a procession lined the route to Campbell’s Hill Cemetery. He was buried in his flannel trousers and his British football jersey. The locals came out in numbers, the dignitaries were present, the shock was palpable. The people of Maitland have maintained his grave ever since, his sad story being passed down through the generations.

‘In the morning we went from Newcastle to Maitland, twenty miles, to bury our poor, unfortunate captain, Mr Seddon,’ wrote Charlie Mathers, a forward from Yorkshire and Bramley. ‘When we got there, we found him laid in his coffin. They all broke down but me. We went and had a service. Church crowded. All shops closed.’

Herbert Brooks was a three-quarter from Durham and Edinburgh University. ‘It was a terrible shock to us all. I should not care to live through another day like that on which poor Bob Seddon was buried. The sympathy extended to us was something wonderful. They had a beautiful choral service in the church at Maitland. The procession was over three-quarters of a mile long. At the front were local footballers numbering around 300, then came the hearse, the English footballers came next, and then followed some 100 carriages. On the morning of the same day a public meeting was held and £150 subscribed at once to erect a monument to Mr Seddon’s memory.’

History tells us that the boys of 1888 played thirty-five rugby games and won twenty-seven, drawing six and losing only two. They played their first nine matches in New Zealand then moved on to Sydney. They played another sixteen matches between June and September. In a bid to make the trek pay, they took on nineteen games under Australian Rules. Twenty-a-side against the best teams the nation could throw at them.

Seddon met the challenge head-on. In what might have been an early example of sledging between British and Australian sportsmen, he let the Rules boys have it with both barrels. ‘Your players are soft,’ he said. ‘That is the tendency of your game. If they get knocked down they resent it and ask angrily whether it was done on purpose. If we get knocked down we simply get up again and go on playing and, perhaps, if we are inclined in that way, look out for a chance to treat the man who tumbled us over in the same way. Yes, of course, rugby is rougher . . . I do not wish to be thought boastful, harsh, or ungrateful, but I honestly believe that the rugby game is far superior.’

Maybe the Aussies admired Seddon’s straight-talking for they couldn’t have been kinder when the terrible event happened. Eventually, the team returned to New Zealand and played another ten matches under rugby laws. How brutally hard that must have been for them. That brought their overall tally of rugby and Rules games to fifty-four. The day after their last contest, the team got on board the Kaikoura in Wellington harbour, sailed home and arrived in England on 11 November, having been away for eight months. There were one man down. He was gone, but he wasn’t forgotten.

*

Three years later, the great show moved on to South Africa under the captaincy of the Scot Bill Maclagan. Only eight of the twenty-one players who travelled – the majority of them Oxford and Cambridge Blues – had ever played international rugby before, but inexperience didn’t stop them from making history. They played twenty matches and won the lot. Even more remarkably, after they had conceded a score in the opening game in Cape Town, they didn’t concede again for the rest of the tour.

It was another rugby marathon, the distance travelled from town to town coming in at 3,263 miles by rail, 650 by coach and 260 by sea. Including the voyage there and back they covered nearly 16,000 miles. The trip was underwritten by Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and was described by one player as ‘champagne and travel’. By all accounts, the boys enjoyed themselves. Maybe the lads of 1891 were the forerunners of all the world-class boozehounds who followed in their wake, all those who embraced what touring is supposed to be all about – playing, yes, but also exploring the terrain, meeting the people, embracing new cultures, building friendships.

‘During the first week we were overwhelmed with social engagements,’ said Paul Clauss, the talented three-quarter from Birkenhead Park and Scotland. ‘There was a smoking concert and dinner given by the Western Province rugby union, Government House ball, a dance at Sea Point, a visit to the theatre, a lunch on board the Penelope lying off Simonstown, a picnic at Hout Bay. They were all a glimpse through the doors of hospitality which were flung wide open throughout the tour.’

The Dunnottar Castle, a vessel owned by Sir Donald Currie, the owner of the Castle shipping line, had carried the team from East India docks in London to Southampton and then to Cape Town in a record time of just over sixteen days. Before the players departed, Sir Donald gave the captain a magnificent gold trophy, to be awarded to the local team that produced the best performance against the tourists. The winner turned out to be Griqualand West, who in turn put up the trophy for an annual tournament amongst the South African provincial teams; the Currie Cup became the backbone event of South African rugby, remains a powerful symbol of provincial dominance, and is a competition which is known all over the world today.

The pitches were like alien surfaces, nothing more than hard-baked grounds full of red dust, some at altitude. The tourists kept winning regardless. They went to Port Elizabeth and won 22–0, they went to Eastern Province and won 21–0, they went to Pietermaritzburg and won 25–0. They played three Tests and won all three. It was a whitewash inspired by Clauss and Randolph Aston of Blackheath and England, a centre who played in every match and scored thirty tries.

None of these men would have known then what the future held for such trips. None of them could have imagined that no other ‘Lions’ team that followed would ever do what they did, no other combined side from the north would travel south and win all around them like Maclagan’s boys of 1891.

*

In 1896, a party led by Johnny Hammond of England returned to South Africa, this time for four Test matches in a rugby nation that was beginning to make some strides. It was the first touring party to include Irish international players – previous members of the small Irish contingents had never played Test rugby. The series was won by three games to one with the only blots on the record being a draw against Western Province and the defeat at the hands of South Africa in the fourth and final Test.

The first Test was in Port Elizabeth and the tourists took it 8–0 with tries by Walter Carey and Larry Bulger, the Irish wing. The second was in Johannesburg and was again won by the visitors, this time 17–8. Froude Hancock, the giant English forward who was a veteran of the 1891 series, gave an outstanding performance with a try in the second half. Two late tries by Theo Samuels were the first points scored by South Africa in a Test match.

The series was sealed at the Athletic Grounds in Kimberley, when the touring team came back from 3–0 down to win 9–3. Bert Mackie scored a try and Fred Byrne kicked a conversion and a drop-goal in a match which showed clearly that the gap was closing between players from Britain and Ireland and South Africa. It was not a surprise when at Newlands, Cape Town, South Africa won the fourth Test 5–0. The visitors were incensed by the refereeing of Alf Richards, the local official, who repeatedly penalised them for wheeling.

The towering character of the trip was Ireland’s Tommy Crean. The anti-disciplinarian, Crean introduced his own guidelines on the consumption of gargle on tour: ‘No more than four glasses of champagne for lunch on match days,’ he insisted. Crean subsequently won the Victoria Cross at Elandslaagte in the Boer War.

‘Tommy was the handsomest man I have ever seen,’ said Walter Carey, his fellow Lion who would, bizarrely, become the Bishop of Bloemfontein. ‘He weighed 210 pounds and was always the fastest man on the field. At some athletic contest he did 100 yards in ten and two-fifths seconds, and that for a fifteen-stone forward is phenomenal. He was the most Irish, the most inconsequent, the most gallant, the most lovable personality one could imagine. And he made the centre of the whole tour.’

Alexander Todd, of Cambridge University and Blackheath was another totemic figure. He was to marry Alice Crean, sister of the charismatic Tommy. Todd had already enlisted in the army before making the rugby tour and three years after the trip he was back in South Africa – fighting in the Second Boer War. He was injured in action but recovered and entered the business world when he returned home. On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he enlisted in the Norfolk Regiment, and was part of an attack on Hill 60 in Ypres. He was seriously wounded and, on 21 April 1915, he died of his wounds.

One of Todd’s gifts to rugby is the series of letters he wrote home to his parents from the 1896 tour. ‘On Thursday morning we got up early and saw the most magnificent sunrise on Table Mountain, the whole range going a bright terracotta,’ he wrote. ‘On Thursday afternoon and Friday, we ran about and trained on the field and finally played our first match on the Saturday. Oh goodness, it was awful. We played thirty-five minutes each way on a ground like a brick wall, had a frightfully fast game, winning by three goals and try to a penalty goal and two tries – that is fourteen points to nine. In the last ten minutes I would gladly have changed places with a corpse. The papers rather slated us next day.’

Todd takes us through the tour, from his team-mates losing ‘square yards of skin’ on the hard pitches in their second game against the Suburban side to meeting Mark Twain at a function at the Orols club. ‘They gave him a book of photos and the old chap made an awfully good speech in reply.’

This was not exactly high-living for the boys. Todd writes of a miserable railway journey lasting eight-and-a-half hours and his subsequent arrival at a ‘beastly’ hotel with no water for baths. ‘My last letter was from Queenstown, where we had horrid weather and had nothing to do but sit in a smoky little sitting-room all day and look at one another . . . We started away from there on Sunday night and arrived here at Johannesburg on Tuesday morning, just about sick of the journey. We played the Diggers on Wednesday and beat them by seven points to nil. The ground is just the road with most of the stones taken off. For the match today there are only ten able-bodied men, four crocks and one invalid playing for us.’

He documents the tragic news received by the tour manager, Roger Walker, who was president of the English rugby union at the time. Walker, wrote Todd, ‘has just had a cablegram to say that his eldest daughter is dying, so he’s off home, poor chap.’

The 1896 team played twenty-one games, won nineteen, drew one and lost one. For the brave travellers from the north, these one-sided expeditions to the south were about to become a little more challenging.

*

Three years later they were off again. For the first time the tour was made exclusively to Australia, with no New Zealand leg. It was to be ninety years until the Lions next made a hike to Australia alone. It was a feature of the early tours that the party included not only men of the cloth but those who were to win medals for gallantry. Matthew Mullineux qualified on both counts. He went on to become a regimental chaplain and then won the Military Cross in the First World War. He was at a field hospital in France, which came under attack from the Germans. The chief medical officer of the post was incapacitated by his injuries. Mullineux took command, continuing to treat the injured and evacuate the worst cases even though they were shelled continually for twelve hours.

That was all ahead of him, but back in 1899 in Australia he had at his disposal a party which included, for the first time, players representing each of the four Home Unions, including the great Gwyn Nicholls, the prince of Welsh three-quarters who went on to become the first Welshman to appear in a Lions Test, eventually featuring in all four in this series.

As usual, the party did not reflect the true strength of rugby in Britain and Ireland at the time because less than half the players had been capped. Even though all four Home Unions contributed players, the party was always referred to as ‘the English football team’. Arguably the most colourful player was the roughhouse Northampton and England forward, Blair Swannell. So many legends and myths surrounded Swannell, both for his exploits as a player and away from the rugby field; many of these were not substantiated, although it is said to be true that he wore the same pair of breeches for every game and that they remained unwashed for most of his career. At a time when good manners on the field were still deemed essential, Swannell’s over-vigorous style stood out. Swannell fought in the Second Boer War, which began later in 1899, and was killed in the Great War at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, in 1915, when serving in the Australian army.

The tour party triumphed by 3–1 in the Test series, although they did lose three of the twenty-one games – they lost the first Test against Australia and also the provincial matches against Queensland and Metropolitan Districts. The poor performance in the first Test led to Mullineux making a brave and selfless decision. He was an accomplished half-back, and had been to South Africa with Johnny Hammond’s team in 1896, but after the Test defeat in Sydney he stood down for the remaining three games in the series, with Charlie Adamson taking over at half-back and Frank Stout, a Gloucester boy who would later play for Richmond, leading the Lions in the last three Tests, all of which were won.

With Stout now at the helm, the second Test was won 11–0, at the Exhibition Ground in Brisbane. In the third Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Alf Bucher, the Scotland wing, scored two tries in a tight victory, although Australia would have won had they landed a late penalty. The tourists won the fourth Test with ease.

There was also controversy and Mullineux was having none of it. ‘I am here as a representative of English rugby football, and feel it is my duty to speak against anything that was not conducive to the game being played in a sportsmanlike way,’ trumpeted the reverend. He voiced his disapproval of what he called the Australians’ trick of ‘holding players back when coming away from the scrum and at the lineout, pushing a man who has not got the ball . . . and, finally, placing the elbow in an opponent’s face in the scrum and shouting to an opponent for a pass.’

This shouting business was the lowest tactic that he had heard of. ‘Please block these things from your football for instead of developing all that is manly they bring forth always what is unmanly.’ He was making these points, he said, not in the ‘carping spirit’ but as a member of the Church of England and as an experienced rugby head who wanted to pass on information that would improve their game.

His teammates nodded in agreement. The Australians might have interpreted it somewhat differently.

*

The turn of the century brought different experiences. ‘The British touring side of 1903, which comprised eight Englishmen, seven Scots, five Irishmen and one Welshman, were the happiest crowd that ever left the mother country,’ announced the Irish forward, Alfred Tedford. Quite how long their joviality lasted is anybody’s guess.

The British and Irish team were beaten in a Test series for the first time. Even though two of the three Tests were drawn, the team were often second-best. They won only fifty per cent of the matches on tour. The defeat of the 1903 boys heralded some dark decades because it wouldn’t be until 1974, under the captaincy of Willie John McBride, that the Lions would win again in South Africa.

It was less than a year since the end of the Second Boer War and yet the welcome was as warm as ever. The party visited sites where battles had taken place only a few months earlier and scrabbled around for souvenirs. ‘As we passed through country where much fighting had occurred we were lucky in having as travelling companions two ex-soldiers who had fought on that famous Stormberg Junction battlefield,’ Tedford recalled. ‘We were also taken to the Magersfontein battlefield, where the Highland Brigade was so badly cut up during the Anglo Boer War. We managed to collect a number of shells and other fragments of war, all of which are still treasured in many of our homes.’

History was one thing, rugby was another. The manager was Johnny Hammond, who had captained the party in 1896, and the captain was Mark Morrison, a powerful forward from Royal High School FP in Edinburgh who was eventually to win twenty-three Scotland caps.