It’s a reasonable bet Warren Gatland will skip over the “Lions are special” bit when he has the players together in London’s Lensbury Hotel on Wednesday.
hey already know that. Kyle Sinckler did a good job of illustrating how un-special it is to have been a Lion on one tour and then, just when you’re supposed to kick on to become a leading Lion on the next one, you get passed over. No, everybody has that t-shirt and tried it on for size. So let’s pause to get jabbed – and a Lions spokesman confirmed the players all received their first vaccine – and move on to the stuff that will affect the results.
Uniquely, that will involve even more attention to detail off the field than on it. The matchday demands, though, are extraordinarily difficult. At least the Springboks won’t find it easy either.
This Is Your Everest, by Tom English and Pete Burns, is the ideal companion for fans who will be watching from a settee or a high stool, depending on the Covidometer in your area. With a barrage of bite-sized quotes from those involved at the coal face, it takes you through the key moments from start to finish on an epic trip in 1997.
It also highlights the difficulty now facing Gatland and Rassie Erasmus. Lawrence Dallaglio set the scene in 1997:
“We grew up in an era when the game was more violent,” he says in the book. “Incidents happened and everything was fair game. From about 1995, that began to change. What was previously acceptable became unacceptable. There were more cameras in the ground, a greater sense of getting caught, and yes, it took a few people a little longer to cotton on to this.
“People were also looking out for Johnno, in the same way they used to look out for Roy Keane. One little incident and you’re in big trouble. Johnno would serve his one or two match ban and newspapers would say he was a disgrace, but it only added to his aura. Eventually the message got through to Johnno that he was no good to us in the dressing room.”
If Martin Johnson was still lacing a boot, you’d wonder if he’d have the bandwidth to cope with the change in rugby’s frequency. What we have now would be seen by the former Lions captain as a restraint of trade. So the dilemma for Gatland is as follows: he takes aside his go-to forwards and tells them the tour will stand or fall on them physically dominating the Boks. Fine. How exactly will they do that?
If Gatland tells them the breakdown is the killing zone, the area where they can smash opponents and finish up with a pointy elbow in the victim’s gob, then he might be in trouble.
Here is his checklist:
If his cleaners lead solely with the shoulder, they are looking at a yellow card; if they make good contact with the head, it’s red. If they want to impose themselves via the tackle, then they need to be flying no higher than the nipple line to avoid the radar. And preferably lower than the sternum. Don’t forget to wrap.
If they want to biff opponents by sitting them down in the tackle, then the carry can’t involve a leading elbow or forearm. It’s not easy to keep that one in the holster when the other cowboy is firing a few shots.
It’s reasonable then for any of the new Lions to ask their coach: ‘If you want us to smash South Africans, but ruck cleaning, tackling and carrying are all areas that could do us more harm than good, what do you suggest?’
That would make for an interesting conversation in what will be the most challenging fly-on-the-wall documentary in Lions history. Maybe a scene where Gatland and the squad’s legal advisor are going though, frame by frame, an incident that has just put one of his key men on an early flight home?
If Warren Gatland had his hands full trying to get the job done to the letter of the law, then consider the pressure that will attend the refereeing teams. We understand World Rugby’s selection panel sat down at 8am the other day to address who will ref where this summer, and were still bouncing names around at 11.30pm. They're not done yet.
The logistics of putting people in place around the rugby world, for everything from fill-in friendlies to RWC qualifiers to the Lions tour, are forbidding. Difficult at the best of times, throw in a spot of quarantine and start again.
As with any Lions tour, the pitch is narrowed by the host nation and the Lions, taking five countries out of the equation before you start. So phones in France and Australia will be lighting up. Answering those calls will be opening those referees up to a whole new level of scrutiny.
Four years ago in New Zealand, Romain Poite was in the eye of the storm over his interpretation of the final moments in the Third Test. Much to the relief of Ken Owens, Poite reviewed the original offside call against the hooker and changed his tune. That seems almost quaint now. The playlist of what can go wrong has expanded significantly since then. Finding the lyrics to go with the song will be an unbearable load. This may not be exactly how Gatland frames it, but carnage awaits.