Battling the Lions: Lionised

One of the many Lions heart-throbs - Rory Underwood, from the 1993 tour, pictured here at Wigram. Herald file picture

From the beginning, glamour has surrounded the Lions.

As one Sydney report on the 1904 tourists noted, the players impressed with their fresh faces and fine physiques.

"The girls fell in raptures over the pink complexions and well-scrubbed look." No hankering after a Colin Meads man's man for those turn-of-the-lastcentury ladies.

While Clive Woodward may try to keep his Lions under lock and key, previous visits are remembered for local dances hosted by rugby unions desperate to ease the boredom of tours which lasted months.

The Lions, with their bright uniforms, brought colour and verve to a country where the archetypal rugby player was a strong, silent type and in many ways, there was not a lot happening.

But not all the fraternising was a great success. There were newspaper murmurings in Wellington and Palmerston North in 1966 after women wearing their best long frocks were left high and dry - and without partners - when the players refused to turn up to balls.

The 1977 tour was marred by lurid headlines branding the Lions "lousy lovers" above an account of one woman's relationship with four of them.

She told the Sunday News the Lions were boring, self-centred and "anything but exciting bedmates," adding she preferred a "down-to-earth Kiwi male any day." Hunt for Lions beefcake and it's not often that the forwards come into play.

The pretty boys in the backline do have it on the front eight, whose delicate features tend to get trampled over the years.

Instead, names such as Barry John, Tony O'Reilly and David Duckham are to the fore.

Irishman O'Reilly, whose newspaper empire extends to the New Zealand Herald, is still remembered for his flowing red locks - and stark, white legs.

Terry McLean described him as the man who sparked such adulation among South African women in 1955 that an "I touched Tony O'Reilly" movement sprung up.

Welshman John is the king of glamour kings, just, it seems, because he is who he is.

He was a reluctant tourist - possibly not helped by the difficulties he had getting his laundry back.

"On one occasion a shirt was even missing from my small batch, but there was a blackmail note saying: 'Your shirt is safe. Please sign your autograph and send it to us'." He did, and got his shirt back.

Gavin Hastings' Scottish thighs may still be remembered at Eden Park, but his predecessor, Andy Irvine, earned pinup status thanks to his attacking genius and boy-next-door looks.

England isn't completely incapable of putting a good-looking foot forward.

There's Duckham, whose blond '70s grace on the wing was legendary; fighter pilot Rory Underwood with flyboy glamour; and a couple with imported genes who rate a mention - part-Jamaican model Jeremy Guscott, and the son of an Italian ice-cream maker, Lawrence Dallaglio (before his hair thinned).

Will Carling qualifies by default.

Despite his dimpled chin and rightside- of-the-tracks credentials, he rates a mention only for the scandal around his friendship with the late Princess Diana, which scuppered his marriage and earned him tabloid cad fame.