So why is Gavin Henson orange?

Otago fan Liam Dell, 8, of Dunedin, gets his ball autographed by Will Greenwood. Picture / Mark Mitchell

If the Lions never met the public, there'd be no chance for the truly great - and crucial - questions to be asked.

"Why is Gavin Henson such a strange orange colour?" a slightly sheepish but curious Lions fan wanted to know.

That had Irishman Donncha O'Callaghan and Scot Gordon Bulloch shaking with laughter.

Perhaps fortunately, the Irish response was inaudible.

"It's all that sun in Wales," Bulloch suggested was the source of the famous fake tan.

Then he spied 11-year-old Peter MacAskill, Scotland flags drawn on his cheeks.

Sporting his Barmy Army beanie, Scotland-born Peter has lived in Dunedin for two years and there was no doubt who he supported.

So would he ever support Otago?

"No." Peter didn't even hesitate.

Lined up at a trestle table in the Otago room at Carisbrook, Bulloch and O'Callaghan were among a dozen or so Lions who spent an hour signing autographs on balls, T-shirts and programmes and posing for photographs for about 300 rugby supporters in Dunedin yesterday.

It was a lounge filled with red, not blue and gold, as Lions fans turned up in force.

Some Otago stalwarts were there - maybe one in five was a local - but there still seemed a tension between officialdom in the south and the Lions management after the cancelled community turnouts on Saturday.

Forget the lack of access to modern-day All Blacks. In the south, what mattered was that the Lions had said they would go to the country towns, but they did not. Stung, the Lions did their best to make up.

On Saturday, coach Clive Woodward and manager Bill Beaumont visited 1959 winning Otago coach Arnold Mannion at his resthome. Yesterday, three players went to the Dunedin Hospital children's ward.

And at Carisbrook, it was Sir Clive who was the most popular man in the room, the queue to meet him far longer than those for his players.

For the easy-going Bulloch, who on Saturday captained the Lions to their 30-19 win and whose ready chat put even the shyest children at ease, mingling was no chore.

"It's important to us to come out, to see the people of Dunedin, to mix with them.

"It's important that we do these kinds of things. It also helps us. If we came and based ourselves in a hotel for eight weeks, we'd be bored stiff."