Davies ready to defend Lions’ pride
THE countdown to next year’s British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa begins in earnest later this month with the appointment of the head coach, and those with the biggest say in that appointment are Gerald Davies of Wales and Andy Irvine of Scotland, tour manager and Lions chairman respectively.
They’ve insisted they wouldn’t make up their mind until the current Six Nations ends, but England’s Brian Ashton has ruled himself out and Scotland’s Frank Hadden is seen as a rank outsider. Of the four current national coaches, that leaves Ireland Eddie O’Sullivan, a man already in grave danger of losing his day job, and Warren Gatland of Wales, who happens to be a New Zealander.
Davies and Irvine visited Dublin recently to meet Irish media representatives to discuss the upcoming tour. During the discussions there was particular criticism of how Clive Woodward, the head coach, and his spin doctor Alistair Campbell, handled the PR side of the 2005 tour of New Zealand.
Davies and Irvine correctly believed the press in 2005 were regarded as a necessary evil by Woodward and his myriad of assistants and stressed that the opposite would be very much the case in 2009.
The tour will consist of 10 games with three Test matches; there won’t be a pre-tour game like ‘05, when the Lions were lucky to draw with Argentina in Cardiff. There will be also fewer players than the 40-plus who went last time.
Thomas Gerald Reames Davies was born in rugby-mad South Wales in February 1945, and in the 1960s and 70s was one of the finest and most exciting wing three-quarters the game has ever known.
As manager next year, Davies will draw on the invaluable experience of touring South Africa with the Lions in 1968. He loved his time there, just as he enjoyed the game wherever he went.
“In terms of a sportsman, you must enjoy what you are doing,” he insists. “I’ve never believed in the idea that you need to be a miserable person to be a competitor. There is a wholeness about a sportsman that can be gentlemanly, he can be good towards his fellow man but when the whistle blows to start the game, there is only one thing on that person’s mind and that is to win. You don’t need to be a miserable person to be like that.
“It’s a great honour and privilege for me to have played for the Lions and to be now asked to manage the Lions. The idea is to make those players, whoever they may be, feel important that they have achieved some kind of pinnacle in their lives, that they are going to wear the Lions jersey, that they are going on tour to a beautiful country and that they should have a very successful tour and that we will be winners.
“Lions tours have changed a great deal. When we went to Australia and New Zealand we might play over 20 games and stay away for three months. Now it’s a much more concentrated affair. There will be 10 games over seven or eight weeks and so it’s a lot more intense.
“There isn’t the same amount of time to see the country and to see the people but I think we’re duty bound and we owe it to all to believe that there is still something very special about the Lions going on tour and that they engage with the people of that country.”
The professional era was still almost three decades away when Davies toured South Africa in 1968 along with people like his captain, Tom Kiernan, Barry Bresnihan, Mick Doyle, Mike Gibson, Ken Goodall, Willie John McBride, Syd Millar, Roger Young, Gareth Edwards and Barry John.
Since then everything has changed to such an extent that many wonder if there is any reason for continuing with Lions tours. Davies has very definite views on the subject.
“The players want it, the public want it,” he declared.
“There is a place for the Lions in world rugby. Australia want the Lions, New Zealand want the Lions, South Africa want the Lions. I hear more and more from Argentina and Japan of how they could be part of the Lions set-up.
“People look to the Lions not only as a competitive team but also as representing — and these are not my words, these are the words of people from overseas — something much more than that, representing the principles of the game.”
“I went on two Lions tours, ‘68 and ‘71. I couldn’t go in ‘74. It was a very important part of my life and talking to Andy Irvine the other day, he was saying that he made great friends and they’re still friends he meets today and that’s very special to him. Apart from the honour and prestige, it was the friendships you made which were without exaggeration lifelong friends.
“Once the Six Nations ends, suddenly there’s a new frame of mind, that the best of the four countries are coming together to become part of one touring team. There’s something very special about that.
“I think in rugby terms, we are honour bound to keep those special relationships alive. Rugby people talk about the camaraderie, the ethos of rugby football, in the end that’s what we’re talking about.
“In terms of winning, I take it as a given that when the whistle goes, the point is to win that game. I think it was Danny Blanchflower, the captain of the Northern Ireland football team, who said that beyond the winning, there is the search for glory and every sportsman should have that at the back of his mind when he goes out to compete.
“That’s been my attitude although, of course, the whole idea is to win. If you play a game of snakes and ladders, the idea is to win it and that is a given. But beyond that there is more and whatever that ‘more’ is, the 2009 Lions will have it.”
Injury restricted the number of appearances Gerald made on the ‘68 tour to a bare minimum (his greatness as a Lion manifested itself three years later when he was one of the stars of the first-ever Lions Test series-winning sides in New Zealand). For him, South Africa was an enigmatic country to visit.
“Apartheid was a very big issue when I went there in the 1960s,” he says. “It was at its height. I felt very strongly that it was something I didn’t like. Other people may advise you of one or two things. Politicians suggest you shouldn’t go but I think you need to find out for yourself what conditions are like and that happened to me in 1967 and ‘68. Times have changed now, thank God.”
Wales are Triple Crown champions and the other three countries have been awful this year. With Gatland’s situation uncertain and Hadden, O’Sullivan and Ashton very much out of favour in their home countries, Davies and Irvine know only too well the enormity of the task facing them over the next few days.
“The most important decision for now is to choose the coach and we have given ourselves the Six Nations period to make up our minds,” says Davies. “We’re a year away from making decisions about players. They come and go, whether for reasons of injury, age, loss of form. A lot of things can happen.
“The determining time, of course, will be after the 2009 Six Nations Championship. We can’t make any decisions now without the coach being on board. You couldn’t handcuff a coach to a decision he wasn’t party to.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
