Oh – so that was it, was it?
For my sins – to be honest, it felt as much a duty as an imperative – I duly watched the live Sky Sports TV coverage of the Third Test between the Springboks and the British & Irish Lions in Capetown yesterday (kick-off 5.00pm UK time) which ended in a 19-16 victory, and thereby an overall 2-1 triumph, for the hosts.
I guess it was a positive that the result could easily have been different – well before the end both teams had butchered chances to “put the game away” – but I’m afraid that my lasting impressions of the 2021 British Lions tour to South Africa are all “so what?” or worse.
I would hold my hand up in acknowledgement if Rusters were to pigeon-hole me as a an “old fart” traditionalist when it comes to Lions tours, but in my defence I’d submit in mitigation the old adage that “If something if worth doing, it is worth doing well”.
If in my own lifetime what I would regard as the classic Lions tours were the 1971 to New Zealand (captained by John Dawes), 1974 to South Africa (captained by Willie John McBride) and 1997 to South Africa (captained by Martin Johnson).
I would claim this because they not only resulted in Test series victories against the odds but involved tours lasting eight to ten weeks and more in which the tourists travelled all around the host countries and played uniformly meaningful games against local provincial or representative sides leading up to – and between – the Tests.
Plus, of course, they boasted the accompanying support of tens of thousands of Lions fans from all four/five nations whose good-natured “invasion” of a foreign land took the welcome unique experience (and profitability) of a Lions tour to the world.
Tapping this out from my subjective viewpoint as a British rugby fan, since the disastrous Clive Woodward-managed tour to New Zealand of 2005 the concept of the British & Irish Lions – rather like that of the “amateur era-centric” Barbarians – has dipped alarmingly in terms of importance and prestige.
This is because of the manner in which great god Money dominates the thinking of all those involved in both senior elite club rugby and the national unions of “The Originals” cabal [the Six Nations in the Northern Hemisphere and the Four Nations – if you include Argentina now – in the Southern Hemisphere].
Against a background in which “player welfare” is becoming a major issue – both because of the white-hot “hot potato” of concussions in rugby union (both one-off and cumulative) and just generally – and meanwhile, separately, the ridiculous “go to” solution that those with responsibility for such things always turn to as a means to generating more cash is to play more games – over the last fifteen years the British & Irish Lions have become a relative irrelevance.
Granted, the Lions embody a wonderful tradition but they’re an oddity in the modern “dog eat dog” commercial world of rugby union and have been forced by circumstance to become rugby’s equivalent of cricket’s The Hundred: they’re given inadequate time to prepare, play games or even bond and grow as a team … and the concept is just not working for anyone involved any more.
Lastly, and most importantly, the just-completed 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to South Africa (specifically its “Three Test Match” series, for these were the only games that mattered to anyone) produced a steaming mass of boring, uninteresting, play.
Effort, yes.
Pride, Aggression, Patriotism, loyalty, camaraderie … yes, maybe.
But brilliant, thrilling rugby?
Very rarely, folks – let’s be honest.
Memo to World Rugby’s committee upon “Forward Thinking”: can somebody apply themselves to the issue of straight “put-ins” at scrum-time, please?
On the evidence of yesterday’s Test Match, one might as well put forward the proposition that the sport should rid itself of scrums altogether.
You really don’t need front five forwards at all in a sport in which you’ve abandoned any notion of “putting the ball in straight” and instead allow it to be chucked immediately into your own second row.
