Thirteen teams have been to take on New Zealand in the past eight years, between them they have played 47 games and won none. The prospectors who came in the 1860 gold rush got better returns than the rugby players who have made the trip lately. In this series the British & Irish Lions, outthought and outfought, 1-0 down with two Tests to play, find themselves in a position from which they have come back just once in the past 100 years. The 2017 tour is in the balance. They are a side who come together in a short time and, riven with natural divisions between men who spend the rest of their lives trying to beat each other, can fall apart more swiftly still. Hope is a precious commodity, expectation vanishingly rare.
Sam Warburton was late for his press conference on Thursday because he was busy finishing a gym session. After he arrived, he achieved, in the space of a few minutes, something Warren Gatland had not quite managed in all the talks he has given this week. He convinced his audience that maybe, just maybe, the Lions really do have a shot at winning the second Test. Warburton has grown up to be a persuasive player, a man with the power to make people believe his team can succeed. Gatland picked him in the XV to help out at the breakdown, yes; but more than that, you guess, he realised that for this, the crucial match of the tour, he needed to back the man he originally chose to lead this team.
People believe Warburton because Warburton believes himself. There is not a man on this tour who cares about the Lions more. He has played for a lot of teams, for Cardiff Blues, Wales, and their under-18, under‑19, and under-20 teams. But there is only one shirt which he has had framed, mounted and put up on the wall. It is a British Lions jersey from the 2013 series. “That’s how much I think of the Lions,” he said. “It’s been the absolute pinnacle of my career. Every career highlight I have had has been in a Lions shirt. I still love playing for my club, Cardiff Blues, and for Wales, but the Lions is what it’s all about for me.”
Warburton was 24 when he led this team in 2013. He had a boyishness about him, long gone now. Before this tour started he got himself a second mobile phone. The only people who have the number are his team-mates, family and close friends. “I’ve just completely shut myself off from the outside world for a couple of months so I can focus,” he said.
“When I was younger, I was running around trying to get things signed for people and doing all these favours. I thought: ‘Right, this is going to be two or three of the most important months of my career.’ I just had to do whatever it takes to be as best prepared as possible.”
The phone Warburton normally uses has been switched off since he got to New Zealand. He’s been living in a “little bubble”, in the gym or on his laptop, studying plays and set pieces, “making sure you know every move”. Last Wednesday he stepped out of it for the first time in a month, to say hello to a group of schoolmates who have come over for the match. He stood them a round “since they’ve come halfway around world to watch me play rugby”, stayed for half an hour and slipped away again. “They’re on a heavy session,” he said with a grin, “so I’ll have to stay away from them.”
Warburton was on the bench for the first Test. He still rated that as “the third biggest highlight of my career”. He was “over the moon” just to make it into the 23 because, not so long ago, he was worried he would not. He tried to kid himself the knee injury he sustained before the tour would allow him “a mini pre-season” and leave him feeling fresh for the Tests. But just a couple of weeks ago, after the Lions lost against the Highlanders, he had a conversation with Gatland, and told him: “I don’t feel I’m at that level that I was in the Six Nations since I’ve come back from my knee injury.” He insists it is different now. “I’ve had a few hit-outs and I do feel ready to get back to that level.”
This game, Warburton says without hesitation, is the most important in which he has ever played. “New Zealand are the one team I haven’t beaten in world rugby, so it’s something I’m desperate to achieve,” he said.
“I have managed to beat every other nation but I haven’t beaten them, that fact, put together with being away from home, starting in a Test match, it’s going to be the biggest honour in my career.”
After last week his top two highlights, if you have not guessed, are the two Lions Tests he played in 2013. And the jersey on his wall? That is from the first game, the one the Lions won 23-21. “The winning jersey,” he said, “that’s the one.” If he has his way, he will have a second to hang alongside it before this tour is over. Hope is precious, expectation rare, but Warburton, for one, has plenty of both.
