It feels like rugby’s Disneyland but it’s far from Mickey Mouse
THEY were taking in more beer at Viaduct Harbour. They have been for several days now. A couple of guys in hi- viz jackets had the barrels piled high on the quayside.
‘You’re going to need more than that,’ ribbed a cheery onlooker in Lions regalia. ‘This is our second trip, mate,’ one of the hi-vizzers replied. He looked too young to have worked through the last visit, in 2005. This promised to be every bit as thirsty.
From four nations they come: red, white, green and blue. It is the ones in the kilts that embody the true Lions spirit, though. The ones who journey from the northernmost points of the British Isles to support a team that consistently snubs their countrymen.
The British and Irish Lions will do so again in Auckland today. Not a Scotsman in the starting XV, not a Scotsman among the replacements. There rarely is, these days. On the last tour, to Australia in 2013, the sole Scottish contributor to the Test team was Richie Gray who played the last 13 minutes of the third Test decider, coming on when the Lions already led 39-16.
It was a similar story in 2009 and 2005. The last Scotland player to actually start a Lions Test match was Tom Smith, against Australia on July 14, 2001. Yet still they come, still they wear the tartan, still they bring pipers and share in the quite unique phenomenon of the last truly scratch team in modern sport.
Yes, every international team is, to some extent, ad hoc. Players are pulled from various clubs and backgrounds and assembled with limited time for preparation but that applies to the opposition, too.
Even the Ryder Cup in which, every two years, a team group is assembled from the most individual of sporting fields, has a sense of competitive balance. Europe’s golfers may be hastily stitched together, but those from the United States are, too.
The Americans may be countrymen but, as a team, they are equally disadvantaged. The same for the teams from the National and American Leagues in baseball’s All-Star game; the same for basketball’s Dream Team, representing the United States at the Olympics. Only the Lions start from scratch and take on established bands of internationals; and, in the case of the All Blacks, the finest team in the world.
The size of the challenge is all part of the mystique. On the eve of the first Test, the Lions are in a far better place than was expected and, as often happens, as the event approaches, optimism abounds.
The absence of Maro Itoje aside, most are enthused by Warren Gatland’s selections and it would be impossible for the players not to take heart from the sheer number of Lions shirts, tracksuits, coats, hats, flags and general paraphernalia now overtaking the city.
‘I wonder how many Lions shirts they’ve bought and brought with them,’ said coach Rob Howley. ‘It can’t just be one, because they wear them all the time. They can’t just have one for the week.’
Leaving aside Howley’s rather optimistic assessment of hygiene standards among the average rugby enthusiast, at least part of his observation is correct. Auckland has turned Lions red in the last 48 hours, the city’s racecourses given over to parking for an expected 900 camper vans. And Howley thinks they’ve all brought t a clean Lions shirt for each day y of the trip. Bless him.
So empowering is the scene that yesterday afternoon groups of Lions players made their way down the hill from the Pullman Hotel to the waterfront to soak it up.
‘They said they want to go out to enjoy it,’ added Howley. ‘Players that are playing, those that are not, too. Just have a coffee and soak it up. I wouldn’t worry about them getting too involved in that atmosphere. I wouldn’t worry at all.’
When Gatland said this week that there were few extroverts in his team, it seemed a strange boast. What great team is without its big personalities? Yet when the emotion around an occasion is as overwhelming as it gets for the Lions, perhaps that hat is a positive, of sorts.
Captain Peter O’Mahony does not say much but has a quite terrifying, unblinking stare, in the manner of another Cork- born leader of men, Roy Keane.
At fly-half, Owen Farrell is equally straight and uncomplicated. Not in a euphemistic way. This isn’t code to imply he’s unthinking. More, Farrell doesn’t get weighed down by needless analysis, whether of the occasion, or issues arising from it. His father, Andy, is one of the Lions coaches, as he was for a time with England. It could make Farrell uncomfortable. He brushes it off, rightly, as an irrelevance.
Do you speak to Andy much, Owen? ‘As my dad, or a coach?’ Both. Either. ‘I don’t think I’ve spoken to him on this tour as my dad. As a coach, I speak to him as much as anybody else would. There’s lots of little conversations that go on, making sure everything’s covered, the basics of the week. Not all of it happens in meetings or in front of everyone. He might just grab you as you’re walking past or on your computer, just have a little chat about what’s coming up — have you thought of this or what would you do in this situation. Just so it’s in your head and then you can move on.’ So no big father-son pep talks? ‘ Well, I’ve never had one before so…’
When Father’s Day came around, Farrell admitted he didn’t want to say anything to Andy in front of the group. A lot of the players sent video messages home, and he would have too, but the management was respectful of family privacy and he wasn’t asked. ‘I was a bit gutted about that,’ he confessed.
Knowing Farrell, though, he will have been quickly over it. He is that sort of bloke. Any attempt to draw him into talk of the occasion in Auckland, or personal match- Sea of red: Lions fans cheer their idols (top and inset), snap a selfie with Elliot Daly (right) and mix with locals (left) ups with Sonny Bill Williams or opposite number Beauden Barrett are stamped into the mud. When it is suggested he enjoys the individual physical confrontations of the sport or that he might draw encouragement from a match in 2014 when England almost won at Eden Park, he becomes quite curt. ‘Rugby’s not about that,’ he says.
‘I don’t have to remember past games. That’s nothing to do with this. All we have to do is make sure we are in the best position and then play the game in front of us.
‘If you go into it thinking about the past then you are focusing on stuff that probably doesn’t matter. You are trying to convince yourself, rather than playing what’s ahead. You’ve got to remember not to play the occasion.
‘You’ve got to think about it like another game of rugby. You can’t be thinking what other people regard as important, getting exciteditd aboutbt externaltl things.’thi One imagines Farrell was not among those heading down to the harbour to soak up the passing parade.
And yet, in his unfussy way, he cut through the speciousness of the ongoing debate around the Lions’ worth. He did not address it in terms of professionalism, structure, recovery times or commercial pressure. He cut to the essence of this tour. It’s fun. It’s a blast.
‘Players find the discussion very, very strange,’ he added. ‘When you see it out here, even in places like Hamilton, the build-up, the anticipation, how much people enjoy it, how much the players enjoy it, how much everybody involved in it loves it — I don’t see why anything negative is said about it.
‘It seems like everybody grips on to what is happening because it’s so different. As a club team you spend every day together, as an international team, you meet up 17 weeks a year and that could go on for many years if your career lasts — but this comes round once
“The essence of
this tour is fun — it’s a blast!”
every ffour years. You hhave ttwo weeks together, you go away and you start playing. And because of that, the buy-in and the amount that goes into it is huge. You see that in the way people here go about their business every day.’
Do the All Blacks feel the same? You bet they do. ‘It’s been the thing we’ve been talking about all year,’ said second-row forward Sam Whitelock. ‘It’s been — “wait till the Lions get here”, and now they’re here. There’s just this new energy in the training sessions. It feels like you’re on a rollercoaster.’
At this point, he is interrupted by his team-mate, Sam Cane. ‘Sam likened it to the first time you go to Disneyland,’ Cane said. ‘That’s quite a good analogy, I thought.’
Meanwhile, back at the harbour, another lorry was surrendering its load. An additional 120 kegs for an Irish bar called O’Hagan’s. It’s a peculiar vision of Disneyland, a Lions tour, but the one thing it most certainly isn’t, is Mickey Mouse.