Pride of lions will add spice to new rugby year

The year 2005 marks the end of the first decade of the professional era in rugby union. It is maybe ironic then that by far the biggest happening in the sport over the next 12 months will be one of the traditions that survived from the amateur age.

The well-known Sunday Times (London version) rugby writer Stephen Jones wrote in his book, The Endless Winter, which was published in 1993, that there is nothing quite like a British Lions tour.

And seeing that it is only when the composite team from the British Isles and Ireland visit their shores that the southern hemisphere nations get to host a proper three match series and a proper tour featuring provincial matches, Jones’s words would probably be more apt today than they were when he wrote them 10 years ago.

The Lions visit New Zealand in June and July, and my travel agent contacts tell me that the interest bubbling in the Land of the Long White Cloud rivals the anticipation that was evidenced in the buildup to the 2003 World Cup in Australia.

British newspapers are already focussing on the tour and the series, and it appears there has been such interest from rugby followers in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland that there is as much speculation on where everyone is going to be accommodated as there is on who is going to win the series.

It seems there will be a British presence in New Zealand during the tour that will make the Barmy Army muster in South Africa during the current cricket tour seem like small fry in comparison.

The reason for the interest is not difficult to figure out if you cast your mind back over previous Lions tours. The clashes are invariably dramatic, they are often closely fought – and given the unpredictability of the composite British team, it is almost impossible to say for sure what is going to happen.

Australia won the last series where the Lions featured in 2001, but there was nothing in it and before a dramatic shift in momentum in the second test of that rubber, it looked as though the Lions were going to win the series comfortably.

The memories of the 1997 series against South Africa centre on the heroism of a British team that although outgunned in most aspects of the game managed to out-defend and out-think a Springbok side that scored three times as many tries as them but could not secure the matches where it mattered most – on the scoreboard.

Ultimately though it was just that Jeremy Guscott drop-goal at the death in Durban that separated the teams, and not since 1983, when the Lions were whitewashed in a four test series by the All Blacks, has a Lions series been one-sided.

Adding to the interest in the coming Lions series, of course, is the small matter of England being the reigning world champions. And New Zealand ending the 2004 international season rated as the top team in the world on the official ranking list.

Graham Henry, the All Black coach, also happened to be the Lions mentor on their trip to Australia in 2001, a series which many British writers felt the Lions would have won convincingly were it not for Henry’s inability to relate to the England players who should have formed the backbone of their challenge.

This series will mark the rugby swansong of Clive Woodward, himself a British Lion in South Africa in 1980 and again in New Zealand in that disastrous trip of 1983. For him it might be a belated opportunity to avenge the humiliation he suffered as a player 22 years ago, as well as a last chance to rub it in the faces of the southern hemisphere personalities who are still smarting at seeing the Webb Ellis Trophy ensconced at Twickenham.

The 2005 Six Nations season will determine how many of Woodward’s playing heroes from the World Cup triumph will be in the Lions squad. While several of the stars have stopped playing for England, most are still playing club rugby. Martin Johnson and Lawrence Dallaglio could still be part of the next Lions pride if Woodward feels he needs them, and it will all hinge on what encouragement Woodward can draw from the form of the remaining players in the Six Nations.

Woodward has said that he will consider Johnson and Dallaglio, and there can be no denying they are still both immense figures on the rugby stage and could still have it in them to undertake one last Lions tour (they were both pivotal figures in the 1997 series as well as the one against Australia).

However, at this stage the British media are trying to ignore the Johnson and Dallaglio options in favour of ones that are playing in the Six Nations. If the speculation is to be believed, God, or Brian O’Driscoll as he was christened by his parents, is the front-runner to captain the side.

Woodward has already appointed some of his off-field helpers, and it looks like being a typically professional Woodward job, with almost as many management members as players (and that says something as he is set to select well over 30 players for the tour!). He has appointed Tony Blair’s former press secretary as his media adviser.

The verbal sparring has already started, and the speculation over who will travel in the playing squad, who will finally get the nod as captain, and which nation should provide the bulk of the squad is sure to mean the Six Nations will be watched closely by not just supporters of the teams involved.