The last time we won in New Zealand
Brian Moore and Martin Johnson tell Tom Cary how the Lions last beat the All Blacks in 1993
As the Lions head to Wellington looking to salvage the series against the All Blacks they could do worse than study the footage of their visit to the same city back in 1993.
Then, as now, the Lions travelled south looking to save the series. They managed to do so in thrilling fashion. A Rory Underwood try from 50 metres out, a sweetly struck left-footed dropped goal from Rob Andrew and four penalties from captain Gavin Hastings earned them a famous 20-7 victory that ranks alongside any in their long and storied history.
It remains to this day the last time they won a Test match in New Zealand. “We were fighting for our lives that day,” recalls Martin Johnson, who made his Lions debut – and just his second international appearance – in that famous win. “If we had lost that game it was all over. It’s the same place these guys are in now.”
The 1993 tour itself had been a strange one, the last of the amateur era with some of the players taking that ethos far too literally and prioritising the bar over performance. Selection had also been an issue with England struggling in the 1993 Six Nations after successive Grand Slams. That meant Gavin Hastings was selected as tour captain rather than Will Carling, while a number of Englishmen who would have expected to travel were left at home.
The Lions were still a formidable side, however. The first Test in Christchurch is remembered for two inexplicable refereeing decisions from Australian Brian Kinsey, awarding Frank Bunce a try that wasn’t and then – after the Lions had fought back to lead going into the last minute – awarding the All Blacks a last-minute penalty that wasn’t. The result was a 20-18 defeat that still rankles with those Lions who played and ensured they were fully fired up for the second match of the series in Wellington.
“I think what happened in the first Test, justice from a refereeing point of view [meant the Lions were fired up],” recalls Brian Moore. “We should have had two decisions. We should have won it. So it was brewing. And we had played Auckland between the games, on the Saturday, an unofficial fourth Test, and we had lost. We were really looking forward to getting stuck into them. Well, I know the forwards were. There wasn’t an invincibility tag about these boys.”
The Lions were also able to call on Johnson – and again in controversial circumstances. The man who would go on to captain the Lions to tour success in South Africa four years later before becoming the rock around whom England’s World Cup victory in 2003 was built, was flown out from Canada where he was playing for England A as a replacement for Wade Dooley, whose father had died.
The New Zealand Rugby Union had offered to fly Dooley back out but the Lions committee, feeling that went against the tournament agreement, said he could only return in a nonplaying capacity. “That [the refusal to allow Dooley back] went down very badly,” recalls Moore.
So badly, in fact, that Home Unions secretary Bob Weighill became a focal point for pranks from the players, who called room service to his room at all hours of the night.
Johnson impressed enough to be named in the Test team, though, and he got over early nerves to put in a superb performance. “It was a whirlwind,” he said. “But you suddenly realise: ‘I’m here now and I am good enough to be here’. You are taking that step into the unknown and thinking: ‘Am I good enough? Am I ready to go and do this?’ Then you get into the game and you realise it is fast and ferocious but it’s a game. It was a moment when you have to do a lot of growing up very quickly.”
Johnson was not the only Lion to start well, but the Lions’ resolve was briefly threatened when Hastings lost a high kick from Grant Fox in the sun and dropped it on his own try line, gifting New Zealand’s Eroni Clarke the easiest try in the world, which Fox duly converted.
But these Lions were made of stern stuff. New Zealand would not score again. Although Hastings missed a couple of penalties, he nailed two before half-time and Andrew added another three points with a sweetly struck drop goal, giving the Lions a 9-7 half-time lead. Moore remembers half-time for some dodgy antics from the All Blacks. With replacements outlawed except in the case of injury, the ABs used the half-time break to spirit away one of their number.
“One of their backroom staff comes on and Sean Fitzpatrick is giving a bit of a lecture. And the physio hands Sean a note and he opens it and then goes over to [Mark] Cooksley and whispers. And suddenly Cooksley develops a mysterious hamstring injury, there’d been nothing wrong with him at all, he limps off and Ian Jones comes on!”
It made no difference as, in the second half, the Lions really took out their frustrations from Christchurch, the high point being Underwood’s try from turnover possession. Fitzpatrick dropped the ball near the halfway line, it was spread left through Dewi Morris and then Jeremy Guscott, to the older Underwood.
It was a brilliant try, but what sticks most in Morris’s mind is the almost indecent way in which Guscott jogs alongside a sprinting Underwood. “Almost in second gear” he marvels.
Moore certainly wasn’t keeping up. He waited on the halfway line and after Underwood had touched down indulged in a bit of baiting. Or “waving warmly to the crowd” as he puts it. It resulted in one of the more bizarre episodes in Lions history, as the fans started hurling beer cans at him. At the next scrum, Fitzpatrick, the New Zealand captain, was heard to remark: “F--- me! Someone’s been drinking!”
Hastings added another penalty and the Lions had achieved something monumental.
“I had always known my rugby history, and I knew to win a Test match with the Lions is historic,” says Johnson. Unfortunately for the Lions a second successive win proved beyond them and they went down 30-13 in the series decider at Eden Park.
“In Test series against good teams, you often have one game when you’re on top and one game when they are. And then you have a deciding fixture,” said Moore. “Unfortunately, the first Test was the deciding fixture. We didn’t realise it at the time.” Little did they realise it would be 24 years – and counting – before a Lions side would beat the All Blacks there again.
‘Unfortunately, the first Test was the deciding fixture. We didn’t realise it at the time’
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