30,000 reasons why Lions are still the biggest beasts

TIME for a declaration of intent: this will be a Lions zone for the next 10 months. The head coach has been unveiled. Fires have been lit. Anticipation is building already and this column is not immune to the gathering hysteria.

There was a mood shift in Edinburgh on Tuesday. Doom and gloom was chased out of town by those revered kings of their sport. Even at the planning stage, the Lions quicken pulses and scatter the naysayers.

How good could they be? For now, it is all theoretical, but consider just one position for a clue. Full-back. Stuart Hogg — the magician — or Leigh Halfpenny — the goal-kicking assassin — not to mention Mike Brown, Liam Williams, Rob Kearney and others.

Riches indeed, and it is the same in many areas. The raw materials exist to create quite some team.

Consider this, too. The ‘red army’ will swarm south in vast numbers, yet again, in defiance of the exchange rate, the exorbitant cost of accommodation and the prospect of distant winter while it is summer at home.

Tour manager John Spencer summed up the stunning phenomenon, saying: ‘We expect 30,000 to go to New Zealand. What other sport or institution can command such loyalty?’

It all links back to the romance of an old- school tour; a proper tour and the unique alliance of four nations under one badge. The appeal is stronger than ever.

Yet, amid the misty-eyed relish for what awaits, there are practical considerations. The Lions have become corporate beasts, but the need for sponsorship must not swamp their basic sporting essence.

This column politely requests that use of the term ‘brand’ is kept to a minimum. The meaning is understood but it leaves people cold. The hordes do not travel 13,000 miles in support of a ‘brand’.

Soon, the time will come to negotiate a new deal with the SANZAR unions and Lions chief executive John Feehan, mercifully, indicated that there is no desire to indulge in overkill by tampering with the four-year cycle. Scarcity is key to the appeal.

For now, though, there are more pressing matters. Warren Gatland needs assistant coaches. He must try to take Scotland coach-in-waiting Gregor Townsend as attack guru, even if it means borrowing him at the start of his tenure with his national team.

Scotland are on tour in June but Spencer is hopeful that a deal can be worked out, saying: ‘It doesn’t rule him out at all.’

Townsend is capable of unleashing the beasts to deadly effect. Come on SRU, agree to release him.

FOR Gatland, there is a profound personal factor behind his admiration for — and devotion to — the whole Lions concept. They are the team who shattered his childhood illusions about rugby. The Kiwi recounted how the Lions Class of 1971 had changed his...