This Lions tour is not yet a week old but already there is no ducking some hard questions. Is it meant to be the pinnacle of a player’s career or a six-week missionary visit? A hard-nosed exercise in beating New Zealand at rugby or a quaint romantic ideal? A band of brothers or a corporate junket? No one currently seems entirely sure.
Perhaps there is no definitive, rational answer. Watching hordes of half-naked Maori warriors advancing on Sam Warburton and his team-mates on a glorious day at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, among the more stunning locations in this strikingly beautiful country, was also to be thankful that modern rugby tours still permit occasional diversions off the beaten track.
Listening to Warburton and others singing a medley of British and Irish hymns in response to their spectacular welcome was similarly affecting. How often do you hear a group of Englishman singing in Welsh? Or Irishmen belting out Jerusalem? We could have been back in 1971, when the Lions sang their way around New Zealand for three months and barely lost a match.
But that might just be the problem, right there. In the 46 intervening years the world has altered considerably while the Lions continue to hark back to another era. Fly in from across the world just three days before the opening match? Hey ho, if we must. Organise a major eve-of-departure sponsors’ dinner in London when players can barely walk following huge domestic finals the previous day? Good idea. Try and beat all the best teams in New Zealand within three weeks in five different cities having barely met? Let’s give it a lash, lads.
Attempt to do it all in this day and age and the lines risk becoming fatally blurred. Saturday’s opening game against the NZ Provincial Barbarians was always going to be awkward, with players inevitably fighting jet lag. One mooted solution was to fly the party out in two sections, only for the idea to be vetoed. It was felt the entire squad should attend the departure dinner and travel as one. Fine in theory, less clever when your starting XV perform like zombies in a much-hyped opening game broadcast to millions around the world.
Afterwards, Warren Gatland was asked what the injury situation was looking like. No one had been hurt during the match, came his reply, but two players, Ross Moriarty and Kyle Sinckler, had suffering back spasms which the head coach suggested might have been exacerbated by hours spent wedged in sponsored 4x4 vehicles en route to community events in Whangarei the day before the game. Lovely Lions read the headline in the local Northland paper on Saturday morning but the good-news story came at a price.
No one would have cared greatly, of course, had the Lions sauntered out and played half-decently in their opening game. Unfortunately for all those who cherish the Lions and everything they represent, the opposite transpired. So many aspects of their performance were so far off it was hard not to conclude something above and beyond mere rugby was involved. Good players resembled hesitant beginners, while a supposedly second-rate opposing team appeared far more of a cohesive threat despite having only spent a week together.
At least the touring side won 13-7, courtesy of a solitary second-half try by England’s Anthony Watson and some much-needed impetus from the bench. Hopefully the jet lag will have eased prior to the game against the Blues on Wednesday and the subsequent collision with the mighty Crusaders in Christchurch on Saturday. The fact remains, nevertheless, that the entire 41-man squad were straight back out on ceremonial duty on Sunday morning prior to another two-hour transfer back to Auckland. They have spent more time practising their hymn singing – there have been 10 to 15 choir practices, according to Warburton – than they have collectively on the training pitch to date.
Of course it is vital to switch off from rugby at some stage. No one wants a repetition of the 2005 tour when Clive Woodward was accused of losing sight of what a musketeering Lions tour should be about. As Warburton also stressed, leaving New Zealand having alienated the host nation is no way to behave either. “I think that’s really important. You want to come over here and paint a good picture of the British and Irish Lions. That is as important as the stuff you do on the field. From a players’ perspective, you want to focus on performance but when you go on Lions tours it is greater than that. It is the legacy you leave behind.”
Warburton is an outstanding ambassador for his nation but deep down, he will know the next week is increasingly fundamental to this tour’s on-field success. When the jet lag wears off and if performance levels remain disappointing, the prospect of a lop-sided Test series will be grimly real. Entertaining everyone with your outstanding choral ability becomes a luxury if you cannot locate even a semblance of rhythm where it really matters.
And if the Lions, for assorted political reasons, are denied sufficient preparation time to be competitive against the All Blacks, what then? For all the love and commercial dollars they generate, the Lions are in danger of becoming an analogue team in an ever-changing digital world.
