Victory will match the greatest results in our sporting history

DID they sleep, those Lions? They won, we know that. Drew the final match in Auckland 14-14 to take the four-match series 2-1. So it can be done. It just isn’t expected. Not then, certainly not now.

The ’71 Lions will go down as arguably the greatest team the northern hemisphere has produced. The names are legion. Even the nicknames. JPR, The King, Merve the Swerve. Yet the speech Willie John McBride made before the first Test in Dunedin was not to the creators, but the forwards — the men who would bear the brunt of the All Blacks ferocity.

McBride — who played nine consecutive Lions Tests, a feat that will be matched in this game by Alun Wyn Jones — knew what was coming and one senses these Lions do, too. Having been taken aback by the sheer physicality of New Zealand at Eden Park two weeks ago, they are prepared this time. They know what they will face there, the mighty expectation the hosts have on their shoulders, and what forces it may unleash.

‘We all know what’s coming,’ said Sean O’Brien, arguably the Lions’ player of the tour so far. ‘They’ll be hurt after last weekend, so they’ll be coming to try and hurt us, to physically impose themselves as they did the first week.

‘But we fronted up pretty well in Wellington, so that’s something you embrace and you go again, don’t you? We’re here for a challenge and we’re going to get it. But I’ve said all week, there’s a lot of improvement in us, too. We can go up another notch as well.’

John Spencer, the 2017 tour manager, was a 1971 tourist. He remembers the days when the Lions kit could be packed in a simple holdall — there are 64 individual items on this tour, including a £595 red velvet smoking jacket and £120 cuff links — and tours were 26 matches long, finishing mid-August. Spencer reeled off the names of former team-mates who have been in touch to wish the team well for today.

‘Gareth Edwards, Barry John, John Taylor, Derek Quinnell, Ian

McLauchlan is here, Geoff Evans, Mike Roberts, Rodger Arneil, Frank Laidlaw, David Duckham, JPR Williams, Willie John several times, Sandy Carmichael. All saying the same thing: “Get this monkey off our backs. We don’t want to die with the record around our necks. We want to win. We’re desperate to win”.

‘You know, when we won in ’71, we didn’t think of it in terms of making history. We thought another team would come along pretty quickly and do it again. Of course, All Black rugby has developed so much since then that every time we catch up to them, they take it a stage further.’

Enter one of the day’s great talking points. If the Lions get it done in Auckland, will it top what is regarded as one of the greatest feats in the history of British sport? The answer is yes, in the opinion of many here. The ’71 Lions were a truly great team — probably, in individual personnel, better than their opponents.

A composite XV from the two squads in that time would have found room for a great many tourists. Barry John, Gareth Edwards, Gerald Davies, Mervyn Davies, Derek Quinnell, John Dawes, JPR Williams, David Duckham, Gordon Brown, Ian McLauchlan, Fergus Slattery, Mike Gibson, Willie John McBride — all would have been at least contenders.

This year, before the Tour began, the temptation would have been to quote the names of 15 All Blacks, and that view hadn’t changed much after the first Test in Auckland. New Zealand, already considered stronger with ball in hand, showed themselves to be stronger physically, too.

It was a clean sweep of rugby talents. To now be in with a chance of winning the series — indeed to be the team with momentum coming into the game — is a position few thought imaginable.

In 1971, the All Blacks were coming off a series defeat by South Africa. Their coach, Ivan Vodanovich, won four Tests in 10 before leaving the position.

BY CONTRAST, New Zealand haven’t lost backto-back Tests at home since 1998, haven’t lost at Eden Park since 1994, haven’t lost a three-match Test series since 1992, haven’t lost a three-match Test series at home since 1986 and haven’t lost a home Test series to a team from Britain or Ireland since ... and we’re back to the ’71 Lions.

‘This is the best Lions team there ever was,’ said Ted Griffin, coach of North Auckland, after an 11-5 defeat back then. Even if the Lions win here, few would elevate the current group above their predecessors in terms of skill. The ’71 Lions are even credited with changing New Zealand rugby. The running, fluid style we see today was only adopted after that tour.

Yet, given that the All Blacks now successfully ape the legends of ’71 — and have added to and refined their game defensively — this achievement would be greater. Perhaps that is why the current management have kept legacy talk to a minimum this week.

History lessons cannot greatly lift an already highly spirited atmosphere — there has been talk of training-ground confrontations in both camps, confirming the tensions around the game — but they could make players nervous.

‘We just want them relaxed,’ said assistant coach Rob Howley, although, in the circumstances, that may be as ambitious as finding an unbiased New Zealand native in Auckland this week.

O’Brien was involved four years ago, too, when the Lions won in Sydney to clinch the series with Australia 2-1, but he was unequivocal when asked to rank today’s game.

‘The biggest,’ he said. ‘The biggest game I’ve ever been involved in, definitely. Sydney was

A lot of you will think you have been in hard matches, and possibly you have. But wait until tomorrow. It will be the hardest game of your lives. The All Blacks will hit us with everything except the kitchen sink. Maybe they’ll hit us with that as well. They’ve got to beat us. There’s a whole country here that’s telling them they’ve got to beat us. They will be out to give us a doing. Think about it. Then go to bed and have a good night’s sleep. WILLIE JOHN McBRIDE, Dunedin, 1971

special. Any time you win a series is special but to come here and win is the ultimate, especially with the schedule we’ve had and the opposition we’re facing and how good they are.’

Yet history, legacy? The man in the arena cannot get bogged down by that.

‘I don’t think players think about that kind of stuff until it happens,’ O’Brien said. ‘That’s down the line. We don’t discuss it. The external things can wait until we’ve finished the job.

‘Look, I’d be lying if I said I don’t look back on the Lions history and see legends of the game who are still in the spotlight because of what they did years ago.

‘As a player, though, when you’re involved you don’t focus on that stuff. We’ll think about it when we’re 50 or 60 sitting having a pint somewhere. They’ll be nice things at that stage of your life, but not right now. We just want to go out and perform, win, and then see where that leaves us.’

Where it would leave them is at the pinnacle of rugby, having beaten the world champions with a team patched together over a matter of weeks. It was the impossible task, and they will have pulled it off. It was the impossible job, and somehow Warren Gatland will have made it work. It would elevate this resident of Hamilton to the level of the greatest coaches, and his players to the realm of legends.

To do so, however, they will not just have to fight and outmuscle a New Zealand team with their backs to the wall. They will have to play intelligent rugby, infringement-free rugby, they will have to keep the penalty count down and the try count up.

Howley’s target is four tries a game for victory. Two were enough in Wellington, but the All Blacks left nine points out there in missed kicks. Had they gone over, the Lions would have been a try short.

Willie John McBride knew how to inspire his forwards, but the creative genius behind the triumph of 1971 was the coach, Carwyn James. Barry John still recalls his final message to his players, before sending them out to make history. ‘Think, think, think,’ he would say. ‘It’s a thinking man’s game.’