Sport
Two months from the start of the British and Irish Lions’ tour, an account of their triumphant 1971 visit is compulsory reading.
Sir Graham Henry described it as a “fascinating document” and a “faithful friend” that accompanied him throughout his coaching career. A British rugby writer made it sound like the answer to the eternal mystery that is the meaning of life: “Few outside a small circle of coaches know of the book and they guard their secret carefully. It is their bible. You will never find it in a second-hand bookshop because nobody dispenses with their copy.”
The Lions Speak is a transcript of presentations to a seminar for aspiring rugby coaches at a North London Polytechnic in July 1972. The speakers – the coach, captain and key members of the 1971 British Lions – explain at length and, at times, in dense technical detail how they achieved their historic series victory over the All Blacks.
As we eagerly await the arrival of the 2017
British and Irish Lions and what promises to be a titanic confrontation, the slim (152 pages), nofrills paperback provides a snapshot of a tour that transformed the game here – Henry called it “the biggest wake-up call in New Zealand rugby history” – and an insight into a power shift that few, if any, in our rugby community saw coming.
As has been the case for the past decade, throughout the 1960s the All Blacks dominated British and Irish opposition. Wilson Whineray’s 1963/64 team had 32 wins and a draw on its 34-game European tour; Brian Lochore’s 1967 team won 16 and drew one out of 17 games. On our turf, the 1966 Lions were crushed, as were Five Nations champions Wales in 1969. And then, as Henry put it, “the All Blacks were suddenly a distant second”.
The speakers were in no doubt where they’d got it right and we’d got it wrong. Coach Carwyn James believed “the seeds of failure were sown” on New Zealand’striumphant 1967 tour. The 15-man game championed by unbeaten All Blacks coach Fred Allen had been adopted with such zeal that the fundamentals of forward play were neglected. The obsession with mobility caused some provincial teams to dispense with specialist props and put converted loose forwards into the front row.
The Lions’ scrum was so superior in 1971 that their props often had to hold their opposite numbers in place to give themselves something to push against. And despite embracing
15-man rugby, New Zealand still valued physical endeavour way above skill. According to James, the Kiwi teams’ catch-and-pass skills were so poor, none of them could execute a swift, accurate transfer of the ball from halfback to wing.
Given the Lions’ triumphant progress through New Zealand – they won the test series 2-1, with one test drawn, and dispatched all 20 of their provincial opponents, with ease in many cases – it’s not surprising that the tone is sometimes smug and occasional passages drip with condescension. To the victors, the bragging rights: they were on top of the world – the 1974 Lions made an ever bigger mess of South African rugby – and “British and Irish coaches and players were the cutting edge of thinking on the game”. Henry again.
There’s also humour, much of it relating to the freakishly gifted Welsh first five-eighth Barry “King” John, the brightest star in the Lions’ dazzling constellation, and his unapologetic disdain for the murkier, sweatier aspects of the game. Irish prop Ray McLoughlin, the mastermind of the Lions’ forward play, recounted that every second morning at breakfast, John would “put his hand patronisingly on my shoulder and say, ‘Tell me again, Ray: are you a loosehead donkey or a tighthead donkey?’”
“British and Irish coaches and players were the cutting edge of thinking on the game.”