Battling the Lions: Bennett admits being wrong choice as 1977 captain

It is a brave, honest and forthright man who confesses at the very start of his reminiscences regarding a Lions tour of New Zealand that he should never have accepted the captaincy.

Few men possess the qualities of courage or sufficiently withering selfassessment to make such a statement. But Phil Bennett, the Llanelli and Wales first five-eighth, did it years after the 1977 Lions had returned home, beaten.

Bennett suffered untold miseries during that tour. Rain seemingly following the tourists wherever they went. At one stage, on the West Coast, it rained for four days and nights nonstop.

Spirits began to sag, the task of handling the demands of a gruelling, 26-match tour became immense.

Bennett felt they had been too much for him. Years later, he said: "I've spent many a wistful hour thinking of what could have been achieved had the leadership gone to someone far better equipped than I to deal with the allengulfing pressures of a three-month rugby expedition.

"By the end of our stay in New Zealand, I had no desire to stay in that country, since I now knew that all my weaknesses as a player and tourist were exposed in that short time." But, pointedly, Bennett added: "While I admit that I was a bad choice for the captaincy, there were others, too, on that tour who have cause to regret the events of 1977."

Now that may well have been as long as 28 years ago. But you just wonder if there might not prove to be corollaries with the 2005 Lions and their leader, Brian O'Driscoll. It seems clear to me that O'Driscoll had to be selected once two Englishmen had been chosen as tour manager and also senior coach. But let us speculate.

What if a Scot or Irishman had been the tour manager? Might not the selectors have felt the man they wanted as captain was a hard-nosed, driven and highly experienced forward, a man able to look the All Blacks in the eye at close quarters and take them on with relish? A man such as Lawrence Dallaglio, perhaps?

The Lions have won a test series in the Southern Hemisphere just ONCE in the past 50 years with a back as their captain. John Dawes in 1971 is the only man in that time to lead a victorious Lions party from behind the scrum. It is a statistic worth pondering.

As for Bennett, his words now might carry a kind of health warning for O'Driscoll in the role he has accepted in New Zealand this winter.

Bennett remembers of his own time as leader: "Each single match on a Lions tour is an international, and no one is capable of maintaining the desired peak of performance in every game. My own form in New Zealand deteriorated badly towards the latter end of the tour, a result of injury, homesickness and, above all I think, the shackles of captaincy."

These sobering words might yet come back to haunt O'Driscoll as he encounters the torrid twists and turns associated with a Lions tour of New Zealand. It is the toughest of all the Southern Hemisphere visits the Lions make and his own performance as a player, captain, leader and inspiration will be under the severest scrutiny.

Ultimately, Bennett found those pressures intolerable. It remains to be seen whether O'Driscoll can escape a similar, personal indictment in the years to come.