Tinge of sadness to Lions tour
OPINION: For me the British and Irish Lions tours will always point me back to some special memories.
On June 8, 1993, the Lions visited Invercargill to take on Southland.
Like many kids around Southland on that particular Tuesday afternoon, school became an afterthought. All roads led to Rugby Park, or Homestead Stadium as it was then named. A few hours off school wasn’t what prompted the excitement that day I was offered the role of ball boy.
Twelve years later the Lions returned to Invercargill in 2005 for another Tuesday game. This time I was a cub reporter at The Southland Times.
A day or so before the game, I headed to Southland Hospital to cover a Lions visit to the children’s ward, where coach Clive Woodward and manager Bill Beaumont were among those present. Beaumont took a particular shine to a seven-monthold boy who had had heart surgery. He indicated they had found their mascot for when the Lions visited Invercargill again in 2017.
‘‘We’ll have to make sure we (Lions) play Southland,’’ Beaumont was quoted as saying at the time.
We now know that visit to Invercargill will not in fact happen. A Southland-british Lions rivalry which dates back to 1930 and included seven Lions wins and two Southland victories is over.
The upcoming Lions tour will be spectacular. It will again be a special time for New Zealand sport but for many in regional New Zealand there will be a small tinge of sadness attached to it all.
Lions’ visits to places like Invercargill seem to be dead and buried as the commercial side of the sport has eaten into the romance of it all. Provincial games have been scrapped for games against the five Super Rugby teams in the big centres.
While squeezing more bums on seats into the bigger stadiums in the bigger centres obviously generates more revenue, have rugby’s decision-makers missed a trick as far as a long-term emotional investment in the sport in regional New Zealand?
The impact an event like a Lions tour can have on generating interest in rugby in the provinces can not be under-estimated.
The ability for an event to create enthusiasm in the sport shouldn’t be overlooked - the youngsters of 1993 and 2005 in Southland can vouch for that.