But there was one man who still stood out
The Lions may have been swatted away 4-0 in the Test series but their blond English flanke Peter Winterbottom managed to shine in adversity and even earned a nomination as one of the five New Zealand Rugby Almanac players of the year.
The Kiwis were already Winterbottom fans having clocked him playing for Hawke’s Bay the previous season when the adventurous Yorkshire flanker had taken himself off to New Zealand for a season to further his career.
“England had a pretty poor Five Nations that year – one draw and three defeats – so I was a bit on edge about getting selected or not and was very pleased when the word came through,” recalls Winterbottom.
“I was really keen to make the trip. I had played that previous season for Hawkes’s Bay and was involved in their game against the Australian tourists and knew how every Provincial side would get up for the Lions. I had enjoyed the intensity and physicality of Kiwi rugby and every wing forward I watched or played against seemed to be a class operator.
“Personally, I couldn’t wait for the tour. At that time I played almost all my rugby bar internationals in front of 300-400 people at Headingley, I wanted more of that big match feeling you get week after week playing in New Zealand.
“It was a tough tour and clearly we made mistakes but we also got unlucky with injuries. We lost some big players early on – Terry Holmes was the biggest loss of all but also Jeff Squire, Rob Norster and Ian Stevens. That rocked us.
“The All Blacks were also a very solid team, they had no real weakness, and the bottom line is that they were better. But I always maintain that for the first three Tests we were ball park. We kept at it and for a long while the spirit was good.
“Steve Boyle was the central figure for the midweek team and he always organised a decent party for the entire squad on Saturday nights. But we ran out of steam in the fourth Test. The series was over, to all intents and purposes the tour was over. And everything New Zealand tried came off that day. We weren’t a poor team but we didn’t maximise out potential. Looking back there is no doubt that as a squad, and especially the forwards, were over-trained and over-worked although for me personally I couldn’t get enough of Jim Telfer’s sessions.
“I was 22, very fit and getting even fitter by the day and loved every moment but we trained every day of the tour. We were even out at 8am for training sessions during our short ‘holiday’ break up in the North.
“I loved it but other players weren’t at the stage of their careers where they really needed that. My impression is that some of the injuries we picked up were ‘fatigue’ injuries, bodies being overloaded and tired.”
New Zealand were also to figure prominently at the tail end of Winterbottom’s career when he was ever-present during the Test series on the 1993 tour, with the third and final Test marking his retirement from the game. The Lions went into that Test off the back of an impressive win in the second Test at Wellington and had real hopes of pulling off the series, but after a promising start faded badly to lost the third Test and the series.
Winterbotom says: “1993 was different in that we were a better team and played well in the first two Tests. That series could have gone either way but that third Test got away from us and we lost quite heavily in the end. What hadn’t changed in the ten years was the remorseless nature of New Zealand Rugby. There is never any let up.
“So I ended up going on two Lions trips to New Zealand and playing seven Lions Tests against the All Blacks. It was a bit of minor regret that I didn’t get to play anywhere else in the world with the Lions. The proposed 1986 tour of South Africa was cancelled and then in 1989 I had been injured and out of the picture.
“So it was just New Zealand for me. I’m not thrilled with the 6-1 loss record but I can’t change it and it’s a pretty fair representation of how things went.
“No complaints and mainly good memories. Representing the Lions down there was always a great honour and brilliant experience, even in defeat.”