Tour tales still burn bright for the oldest living Lion

Angus Black, aged 92, tells Richard Bath how the 1950 New Zealand tour was shaped by interminable boat trips, All Black thuggery and acute homesickness

There are moments in every player’s career that cause sleepless nights, yet few get to linger on them for as long as Gus Black. Now a very chipper 92, the oldest surviving Lion is still haunted by a moment in the first Test against New Zealand in 1950 when he spurned an opportunity to topple the All Blacks in their fortress stadium at Dunedin. The game ended 8-8; the Lions ended up losing the four-test series 3-0.

“I shall go to my grave – which is now sooner rather than later – knowing I shall never forgive myself for not beating them,” Black says. “I broke from the scrum and there was space, but outside me, unbeknownst to me, was Ken Jones, with nothing in front of him. We were just outside the 25, so it was a certain score, and I neither saw him nor heard him.”

That, Black believes, was the Lions’ big chance. New Zealand captain Ron Elvidge scored a late try to scrape a draw and, after that, the All Blacks turned on the after-burners. Although the results look close – the Lions lost the remaining Tests 8-0, 6-3 and 11-8 – Black says they were comprehensively beaten.

Not that his memories are all sour: far from it. Sitting in an armchair in his care home in Fife – his accommodation is purely a matter of convenience, as his upright frame and razor-sharp mind would shame men 30 years younger – you can sense his excitement when he recalls the moment, as a 25-year-old medical student from Edinburgh, “just 10½ stone in a dripping wet shirt”, he discovered he had been selected for the tour.

“I got a letter in the post, which didn’t come as a great surprise, because I thought I’d be a natural choice,” he says. “You had to be able to put up a hundred quid [£3,200 in today’s money]. That was quite a lot in those days, especially for chaps like Cliff Davies, who was a miner in south Wales. He didn’t have any place near a hundred quid, but the village clubbed together.

“We were paid £2.50 a week for hospitality, to buy a round if needed, but it was difficult to spend a penny, because you know the New Zealanders made it difficult to put your hand in your pocket. It was 1950 and it was the first sort of major contact after the war, so they were kindness itself.”

Black had played against many of his fellow Lions, but knew few of them well. In that sense, the three-week passage from Liverpool to Wellington via the Panama Canal – quite a contrast to the 27-hour flight Warren Gatland’s touring party undertook on Monday – was valuable.

The shy Jackie Kyle was the star player, and the diffident Karl Mullen their titular leader, but Black’s sharpest memory is of another tourist.

“As a bunch of blokes, you couldn’t have asked for better,” he laughs, “but in terms of characters you’d have to put Cliff Davies at the top of the list. He played front row for Wales and had a naturally pleasant singing voice. He sang rather more than even most Welshmen, and had a taste for opera. He was forever bursting into song, particularly at receptions. Quite frankly, to the average onlooker, it was a pain in the a--but it made everyone feel very jolly and bonded us with visitor and host alike.”

Incredibly, there was no coach, and the selection process “was a sort of democratic outing” where the team manager, Surgeoncaptain Ginger Osborne, and his assistant, Ted Savage, plus Mullen and a group of senior players such as Bleddyn Williams and Jack Matthews, would hammer out a consensus.

Feted wherever they went, debuting their red shirts and white shorts (they previously played in blue shirts) and calling themselves the Lions for the first time, the tourists won all three games in the opening week. Black was outstanding in the 24-9 win over Buller but, in the lead-up to the first Test, heavy defeats against Otago in Dunedin – where he ran the line dressed in his kilt – and Southland, where Black was targeted by the opposition, gave a hint of what lay in store.

“We could have won the first Test, but I think in retrospect the All Blacks had been told to be gentle,” Black remembers. “It would have looked bad for them if they’d been too rough, but that attitude didn’t last. In the second Test in Christchurch, I spent more time up in the air than on the ground. They really went to town on me.”

It is easy to see why Black was targeted. He was selected for the first Test because he possessed the fastest and longest pass of the three Lions scrum-halves. His task was to release a talented back division containing legendary Irish