Paul Thomas: A time for self-induced sporting schizophrenia

The Lions and I go all the way back to July 8, 1959. In those days kids got the afternoon off school when the Lions came to town so hundreds of us lined the touchline at Fraser Park, Timaru, to watch them beat South Canterbury-Mid Canterbury-North Otago 21-11.

My clearest memory is of Tony O'Reilly, the Lions glamour-boy winger renowned for his long legs and short shorts, flashing past en route to the try-line. The enduring clarity of this image owes nothing to the fact that the same Tony O'Reilly now owns this newspaper.

As he usually did, the Herald's great rugby writer, the late Sir Terry McLean, recorded the tour for posterity. Kings of Rugby is a wonderful example of the now-defunct tour book genre and a superb piece of sports writing. In his "pen profile" of O'Reilly - then 23 - McLean wrote: "One felt reasonably sure that he would in time become president or premier of the [Irish] Republic."

A big call, as they say, and a pretty good one seeing that O'Reilly went on to carve out a business career that has conceivably made him more influential in the wider world - and certainly a great deal richer - than if he'd elbowed his way to the top of Irish politics. He'd probably go along with his rock star compatriot, Bono, who wouldn't want to be president of the United States because it would mean moving into a smaller house.

O'Reilly wasn't the only '59 Lion who went on to great things. One of the props was Syd Millar, who coached the 1974 Lions team that went though South Africa like a Mongol horde. He is now chairman of the International Rugby Board and arguably the most powerful figure in the game. According to McLean, Millar seriously considered settling here. Given the problems we've had with the IRB, it's a pity he didn't.

Nor was that team short of colourful personalities. Reginald Marques, the English lock, never left the hotel without his brolly and bowler hat.

Another prop, Ray Prosser, later made his mark coaching Pontypool, traditionally one of Welsh rugby's minnows. He liked to say, "We've got two tactics: up and bloody under", and during his tenure the club became a conveyor belt churning out international forwards including the legendary front row of Charlie Faulkner, Bobby Windsor and Graham Price who toured here with the 1977 Lions.

If the training run I saw was any guide, Prosser's methodology could be loosely described as tough love. He told a carthorse flanker: "You run like the hairs in your arse are tied together."

Pontypool's home ground was in the middle of a large public park and the local community was divided between those who went to training sessions because they provided the best free entertainment outside a nudist colony and those who objected to having to take their evening constitutionals amid a barrage of elaborate, high-decibel profanity.

When the team gathered in England before departure, the 19-year-old Irish centre, David Hewitt, a Plymouth Brethren who didn't drink and abhorred bad language, was so shaken by Prosser's command of the vernacular that the management feared he would pull out of the tour.

These days the Lions come here once in a blue moon, but between 1959 and 1977 they toured four times. Over those four series the Lions and All Blacks underwent a role reversal in terms of playing styles that to some extent continues to this day.

The 1959 side were the great entertainers. In the first test at Carisbrook they scored four tries but lost to Don ("The Boot") Clarke's six penalties. McLean reports that the New Zealand public was so taken with the Lions ball-in-hand attacking flair and so disenchanted by the All Blacks' forward grind and lack of adventure that by the fourth test at Eden Park the crowd was chanting "Red! Red!" and roaring with relief when Clarke missed a penalty that would have drawn the game.

The 1966 Lions were bullied from pillar to post by one of the best and most ruthless forward packs ever assembled, but by 1971 their superior scrummaging technique was providing a platform for one of the best backlines ever assembled.

By 1977 the wheel had come full circle. In the fourth test the All Black scrum was in such disarray that they resorted to the feeble tactic of three-man scrums. (Remember the derision heaped on the French last November when injuries to two of their props persuaded them to call for uncontested scrums?)

However, the Lions' back-play was so pedestrian and unimaginative that they couldn't convert forward dominance into points on the board. Despite being largely reduced to living on their wits, the All Blacks sneaked a series-clinching victory.

This tour will bear little resemblance to 1959's. To take one small but illustrative example, in 1959 the test match touch judges were team reserves.

But some things don't change. In this series, victory will probably go to the team which manages to achieve that state of self-induced sporting schizophrenia that the late Carwyn James, visionary coach of the 1971 Lions, characterised as "fire in the heart and ice in the brain".

* Paul Thomas is a Wellington writer.