Lions’ skippers always locked and loaded
THE British & Irish Lions have won about 37% of all their Test matches against the Springboks.
So, when the 1997 squad landed in South Africa, they had it all to do.
Martin Johnson was an inspired choice as captain for the 1997 trip down south, as he was not even England or Leicester skipper at the time. But Lions coach Ian McGeechan had other ideas, having been impressed by the No 4 lock’s leadership skills at his club, where he had stood in for the injured Dean Richards.
Lions team manager for the 1997 tour, Fran Cotton, told the team’s official website that the deciding factor in the decision was a chat he had had with Johnson’s mother, Hilary.
“Johnno was a fantastic, worldclass lock, we knew that, and, like Ieuan (Evans from Wales), barring injury, he was inked into our starting Test team, but from what I could gather he had no captaincy ambitions or history.
“I spoke to his then-coach at Tigers, Bob Dwyer, and some senior members of the Tigers team and a few of the England boys as well. All were full of praise, but I wasn’t getting a real feel for the guy, so I took the radical step of calling on his mum Hilary for a chat. Nobody knows you better than your mum!
“Hilary was sensible and proud, but she didn’t lavish praise.
“Right at the end, I asked her what his greatest quality was. Without hesitation, she said ‘his truthfulness and honesty’. If you asked him a question, he would give you a straight answer. He would never lie. If he said he would do something, he never let you down.”
And the rest was history. Johnson, all blood and guts, led the Lions to a thrilling 2-1 series win. Johnson became the first player to lead the Lions on a second tour, to Australia in 2001, but his team went down 2-1 despite winning the first Test.
McGeechan, upon his return as Lions head coach in 2009, again opted for a lock, Ireland’s Paul O’Connell, to captain the side to South Africa.
It was another left-field choice, considering O’Connell was not the Irish skipper, which was Brian O’Driscoll.
The outside-centre admitted his disappointment with being overlooked for the leadership role in a column for The Guardian: “Even though it wasn’t too much of a surprise to have Paul confirmed, it still stung a little bit … Of course I would love to have been captain, and it hurts to feel like you have been overlooked.”
McGeechan, meanwhile, told the BBC that the red-haired O’Connell reminded him of Johnson. O’Connell was an in-your-face type of lock who did the hard yards.
His high work-rate was his greatest asset, as he carried the ball aggressively, jumped well in the line-outs and defended ferociously.
Unfortunately for the Munster legend, his 2009 Lions pack got drilled by the Springboks in the scrums in the first Test in Durban – where Tendai Mtawarira famously destroyed Phil Vickery – as the South Africans won 26-21.
O’Connell’s team hit back with a vengeance in the second Test at Loftus Versfeld but not even a yellow card to Schalk Burger in the second minute could set up a victory.
The Boks roared back in the final quarter, with Morné Steyn kicking the winning penalty from over 50 metres out.
O’Connell’s three-tour Lions career ended in unfortunate circumstances in 2013 with a broken arm in the first Test against Australia, while the Wallabies clinched the series 2-1.
For the 2021 series in South Africa, the Lions continued with the tradition of choosing a lock as the captain in the shape of Wales veteran, and now remarkably returned from injury, Alun Wyn Jones, who followed in the footsteps of Ronald Cove-Smith (1924), Robin Thompson (1955), Willie John McBride (1974), Bill Beaumont (1980), Johnson (1997) and O’Connell (2009).