How ‘tour from hell’ triumphed
Against all odds, a trip that looked doomed yielded one of the Lions’ greatest ever results. Gavin Mairs reveals how it happened
In the final moments before kick-off at Eden Park on Saturday, Sam Warburton found himself in reflective mood. On previous Lions tours, former captains have used such defining moments to delivering passionate rallying calls to their team-mates, urging them to lay their bodies on the line for the famous red jersey.
Warburton instead turned to words of inspiration from fourtimes gold medal sprinter Michael Johnson, who once said: “Pressure is just the shadow of great opportunity”.
“That’s how I see it. Don’t be afraid of what you could lose. Be excited about what you could achieve,” Warburton told the squad.
Later he said: “I probably didn’t say as much as I normally would because I felt very emotional before the game. You think of all sorts – my family, my little girl, my wife, all the things you sacrifice to get here. You just want to make all your family, friends and fans proud of you.”
Warburton’s retrospection in the heat of the moment ahead of one the Lions’ greatest feats was understandable. The journey to that point had been one of the toughest ever undertaken by a Lions squad and Warburton had been a key influence in ensuring the 41-man squad were able to forge themselves against all the odds into a side capable of matching the world champions.
Three months earlier this own tour had been put into jeopardy with a knee injury he sustained playing for Cardiff Blues against Ulster at Ravenhill. It was an injury that would ultimately deprive him of a place in the first Test and spoil his unveiling as captain in London two weeks later. Yet even before the squad had departed from Heathrow on May 30, the Lions received a boost that Rob Howley, one of the tourists’ assistant coaches, felt as one of the defining moments of the tour.
Defeats for Saracens and Leinster in the semi-finals of their domestic leagues enabled the Lions to assemble a squad of 30 players for their second minicamp, in Dublin, before there May 30 departure. It was during the three-day camp in Carton House that the seeds of the Jonathan Sexton and Owen Farrell 10/12 axis were first sown.
“They were in training together in Dublin and I think that they might have seen themselves as an opportunity and as a partnership,” Howley said.
Steve Tew, the chief executive of the New Zealand Rugby Union, would question why the Lions did not send those players to New Zealand ahead of those involved in domestic finals to allow them to recover from jet lag and acclimatise ahead of the first game against the Provincial Barbarians.
The commitment to the farewell dinner on the Sunday night after the Premiership and Pro 12 finals, which was hugely important to the Lions sponsors, and the desire to travel together as a full squad, ensured it did not become an option. The cost of booking late flights and hotels, understood to have been £500,000, was also prohibitive.
The trip to Auckland was not helped by the fact that their sponsorship by Australian airline Qantas meant they had to fly via Melbourne, adding hours to the flight. The Lions attempted to combat this by staying the night near Melbourne airport, but the consequence was they arrived in Auckland on Wednesday afternoon, less than three days before their first match, with three players falling asleep on the seven-minute journey from the hotel to the stadium in Whangarei. The Lions’ display reflected the shambolic nature of their preparation time.
Meanwhile the Lions commitment to embracing the local community presented more challenges to the schedule. On the day before the first game they set off in Land Rovers on a three-hour drive from Auckland to Whangarei to attend 15 different events, part of a move to fulfil their numerous community engagements at the start of the tour. After the game Gatland hinted that the length of the journeys had been linked to back spasm injuries sustained by Ross Moriarty and Kyle Sinckler. Moriarty would not play again.
The under-par victory handed the New Zealand media the opportunity to question the tourists’ quality and begin the first of what Gatland perceived was a personal campaign against him. His son Bryn, had played at fly-half for the Barbarians and the Lions coach was incensed by a newspaper that suggested he would target his own son. Bryn, meanwhile, received abuse directed at his father on his Facebook account.
The request for the tourists to attend an official Maori welcome at Waitangi, an hour’s drive north of Whangarei, on the Sunday after their opening game was a memorable occasion but denied the Lions time to prepare for the first meeting with a Super Rugby side, the Auckland Blues, the following Wednesday.
The Lions board had agreed 18 months previously to the request by the NZRU for the tourists to play their Super Rugby sides for the first time rather than provincial sides. Hindsight would prove it was the right decision but it made the first weeks of the tour the toughest the Lions have ever experienced. The Auckland Blues
game would end in a narrow defeat, ramping up the pressure.
The decision by the management to combine their traditional day off midweek with their exhausting travel commitments – including 10 internal flights – left almost no time for the players or coaching staff to have a break from the demands of the schedule.
The squad would have to wait until the Wednesday before the second Test in Wellington for their first full day off. The building pressure appeared to come to a head when the squad travelled to Rotorua for the match against the Maori All Blacks and Steve Hansen had turned the heat on Gatland by leaking details that the Lions coach was on the verge of calling up six more players to his squad to help protect the Test squad.
It is understood that Hansen, a former Wales head coach, had stumbled on the information via a chance meeting with a Welsh Rugby union official. One New Zealand newspaper portrayed the call-ups as development that was likely to cause a split in the camp between the Test side and the midweek team.
And there is no doubt that it became one of the major issues of the tour, with Gatland accused of devaluing the Lions jersey by calling up players based on geography rather than merit. The furore from supporters and former Lions, and disquiet within some sections of the squad, forced the management to reconsider their plans. Instead it was decided that the call-ups, who became known as the ‘Geography Six’ would only be used as injury replacements.
For Gatland, the turning point in the tour came that night against the Maori side, when the spine of his Test team produced a brilliant performance against star-studded opposition. It was a message to the New Zealand public that the Lions were a serious side and cemented belief in the squad that they could really challenge the All Blacks.
In the week before the first Test, Warburton’s influence was again key. The fact that he was able to publicly accept the reasons for missing out on selection because he was short of game time ensured others could not grumble about their lot.
Even after the first defeat, the sense of belief in the project was such that the squad’s confidence was not shattered as it was on the tour of New Zealand in 2005. Gatland’s decision to recall Warburton for first Test captain Peter O’mahony and drop Ben Te’o to bring in the Farrell/sexton axis was tough, but right for the side. The Lions began to ask questions of the All Blacks defence and Farrell held his nerve to salvage the series in Wellington.
The trip to Queenstown at the start of the week before the final Test raised questions about the wisdom of having two days off for recreational activities such a bungee jumping and a night out together, but internally it was seen as a masterstroke.
“The key to the Queenstown trip was to ensure more than anything they were mentally refreshed,” said another source. “If you are mentally right, you make the right decisions. The hard work had already been done.”
There was still time for one more feisty training session while Rory Best was asked to address the squad about the physical challenges of facing the All Blacks after they had been beaten, as Ireland had done last November.
After Warburton’s inspirational speech, all that was left was for Gatland to remind the squad about the journey they had made to reach the verge of greatness.
“I told them sometimes things comes along that give you an opportunity to do something special. And to win a series in New Zealand would be incredibly special. Sam also spoke about how seven of the players were involved in the third Test in Australia in 2013 as well, so there was a lot of confidence and self-belief. And that was about it.”
The history boys would have made Johnson proud.