Letter from Cape Town: 'I brought the button accordion and there’s been a few guitars'

Thankfully, as yet, the violence and protests that this week erupted in both Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, and KwaZulu-Natal, the main city of which is Durban, has not reached Cape Town

A view of British & Irish Lions training. Picture: INPHO/Dan Sheridan

Five summers ago, when Joe Schmidt and his Ireland squad visited the Mother City on the first leg of their South Africa tour, Robbie Henshaw and some of his more intrepid team-mates spent their down day in the ocean, watching sharks from inside a cage.

Needless to say, Henshaw’s is a very different experience this time around as the British & Irish Lions settle in for the long haul at their isolated hotel bubble 120 kilometres down the coast from Cape Town.