Chris Rattue: Lions pine for days of motel wrecking

Footie players behaving badly has reached the point that it is hardly news because it certainly isn't new.

Warrior Lance Hohaia arrested after an incident outside a nightclub (where else?). Crusader Norm "Nightclub" Maxwell finds the energy to smash his football-battered body through a plate glass window (Norm looks like an unmade bed and likes his surroundings to match).

This sort of news struggles to make the front page nowadays and is probably heading towards the results column.

In contrast to soccer, where the fans demolish things, it's the players you worry about in the rugby codes.

British journalist John Hopkins catalogued some of this standard rugby behaviour by the 1977 Lions - the team deemed "lousy lovers" in a tabloid newspaper by a woman who had slept with four of the players.

This friendly girl, who clearly knew how to rise up from disappointment, was actually fortunate to find four available Lions, considering they dedicated so much time to annihilating their living quarters around New Zealand.

Hopkins' book Life with The Lions is a wonderful inside look at an old-style tour and it's doubtful that any current hack would get so close to a team, especially with big Al Campbell lurking in the corridors.

Hopkins got so close he could list the homesick players - virtually revealing what they were saying to loved ones back home.

You know the sort of thing: "Dear Mum, missing you heaps. Must dash, I've got a room to mutilate."

What emerges is that these Lions, in the main, destroyed their accommodation when they weren't happy with the standards.

Of course, if everyone had decided to wreck 1970s New Zealand hotel and motel rooms that were no good, there wouldn't have been any left.

In Wellington, the 1977 Lions were so drunk, disappointed by a test loss and upset with the rooms that they smashed the doors down. This presumably did not improve the accommodation. They paid $500 in repairs.

Two of these Lions hosed a women out of her room in Christchurch and later paid $80 for the drenched carpets, which was unheard of. Paying $80 for a hotel carpet, that is.

And they trashed the Whangarei Hotel for being beneath their clearly high standards. The only miracle on this count was that they left the rest of the city alone.

Hotel receptionist: "Anything from the mini bar last night sir?'."

Lion: "Ahhh, yes, a bag of crisps and a bottle of pop. And by the way, I nuked the room. What does that come to?" Fighters, not lovers, might have been the 1977 Lions team motto.

However, Hopkins did reveal that, despite having to endure three to a room, the Lions were so impressed with the service at a motel in Pukekohe that they didn't do a speck of damage.

You can still mention the 1977 Lions to the grateful people of Pukekohe and they will beam back at you with delight.

"Why is it that grown-up, responsible men, teachers some of them, turn into wreckers? I just don't know," Hopkins said of players he had come to like.

It can be revealed here that the 2005 Lions coach Sir Clive Woodward is so desperate to recreate a traditional tour that imitation motel rooms will be built near the team's superstar hotel at the Auckland Viaduct so his players can wreck them. They also plan to visit the motel in Pukekohe and leave it alone.

The Lions' determination to use authentic Kiwi motel rooms delayed the project because they had trouble finding enough 10-watt bulbs, orange curtains and purple-and-green bedspreads.

To get the players into a state of frenzy, the rules include having to find the light switches before the wrecking can start.

A team of 10 English carpenters and two Irish labourers will work, sort of, through the night to reconstruct the rooms for more wrecking the next day.

The carpenters are on a tea break in Epping and might arrive next month. The labourers have already arrived, by accident, and will forgo all wages if they can keep the curtains and bedspreads and get to meet Norm Maxwell. Snooker legend and all round loony Alex Higgins will join the squad as the motel room wrecking adviser.

Jonny Wilkinson has been excused motel-wrecking duties because management fear he will become obsessed about doing it perfectly and spend endless hours practising at the Hilton - which could be very expensive.

And finally, a confession.

This story was first revealed by British Sunday Times journalist Stephen Jones, who described it as yet another masterstroke by Woodward.

Jones claimed the All Blacks wanted to follow suit but had found that because the Super 12 was so soft, they no longer had any players capable of wrecking hotel rooms.

"Tana Umaga couldn't smash a lightbulb to save himself," Jones ranted.

To which I say: Bring Back Norm (actually, he was just very unhappy with the standard of plate glass windows at the function).