Battling the Lions: 1993, team of extremes

We should have known. Even if the Lions emulated all but their famous 1971 predecessors and fell over in the test series, their travelling media would make up for it.

That was signalled pre-tour with a widely-publicised viewpoint from the British Press Association correspondent.

He concluded that the Lions would battle biased local journalism, eccentric referees not used to the European lawbook and, worst of all, an escalating level of violence.

"In most opposing teams there will be a local hit-man who will kick and punch unpenalised so that he can say 'I wounded a Lion'," the inflammatory column continued.

It made good copy but its veracity was as dodgy as the sweepstake held amongst the touring New Zealand and Lions media. Before each game we threw in our loot, choice of the winner and score, with any unclaimed proceeds earmarked for a final weekend party in Auckland.

We turned up for the third test at Eden Park to discover the sweepstake organiser had used the surplus to ply the Lions management with champagne the night before.

Done again. But at least the All Blacks put that injustice to right soon after with the series victory.

Curiously, the 1993 tour had elements of the 2005 visit about it with 16 Englishmen in the 30-strong squad, some in the last stages of their careers, with Peter Winterbottom and Wade Dooley already retired.

It was a squad with tighthead-prop difficulties. Eventually Paul Burnell and Peter Wright were deemed inadequate with Jason Leonard forced to switch sides in the scrum.

It did not take long for the tour to split into midweek and weekend warriors. The crossover was modest after the selectorial sparring in the early stages and the inevitable damage.

Injuries to Ian Hunter, Scott Hastings, Martin Bayfield and Stuart Barnes disrupted some plans while the exit of lock Dooley for his father's funeral and the sorry ban on his return, did not help.

The Lions lost only once before the first test, when they could not handle the pace or enthusiasm of Otago. That fuelled ideas that they would be more vulnerable against the All Blacks.

Instead, the All Blacks benefited from two controversial decisions by referee Brian Kinsey to award Frank Bunce a try and a final-minute penalty which Grant Fox goaled for a 20-18 victory.

From there, the Lions won only two of their final six matches, including the pugnacious second-test triumph in Wellington when they fed off the All Black mistakes and their defence battered the All Black backline.

While that set up a compelling testseries decider, the midweek Lions went into a lame decline, their packs were embarrassingly bad as they were belted by Hawkes Bay and Waikato.

There was some of that flatness about the Lions for the final test while the All Blacks were so much sharper than they had been in Wellington. They had been bombarded with criticism all week - the fear of staining the nation's rugby history ignited their winning fury.

* Wynne Gray is the Herald's chief rugby writer