Winning with team mates you’ve only just met.
Lions tour update
Modern technology allows us to follow international tours remotely with increasing ‘accuracy’ but with decreasing satisfaction. It is a situation which will, sadly, have to become more acceptable in the years to come – not just because of Covid but also costs, but there will never be a substitute for ‘being there’.
The Proteas’ first full tour of Ireland would have been one of the more memorable experiences to live. It is one of the most hospitable countries on earth and, even during Covid times, the hosts would have made us visitors welcome – as they have with the players. When head coach Mark Boucher referred to the beach close to the team hotel which has provided the squad with such welcome relief from their ‘bubble’, all I could think of was seeing and experiencing it. But all we had was a brief mention and our imaginations.
My real life substitute has been the British and Irish Lions tour. Amongst the most iconic and cherished of all sports tours, it is inexcusable that I should even consider referring to it as a ‘substitute’. I am honoured to be on it, and considerably humbled. It only happened because of Covid but, I’ll be honest, it feels almost as remote as the real remote tours I’ve missed. Only the moments when my remoteness from the players is a mere four-metres, and the during the 80-minutes of game-time on the field, does it feel like a tour.
There are no breakfast coffees with media colleagues, no sundowner beers or evening meals, no airports and hire-car tales. Well, there was one airport, and one hire-car, but I was alone.
It’s been a tale of PCR tests every 48 hours (by PPE-clad testers) and three hours in the car most days to Arabella Country Estate since the tour moved from Gauteng to Cape Town. The Lions are enjoying an enormous advantage being based at the resort just outside Hermanus. They have the entire 300+ room hotel to themselves and the skeleton staff who are also staying on-site.
They have full use of the estate and the Championship golf course as well as the gym and Spa facilities. The Springboks, meanwhile, are staying in the City Centre Tsogo Sun which they are unable to leave, except for training and Test matches, for the next 16 days. Playing at sea-level and the likelihood of a wet contest also play into the Lions favour.
Marcus Smith is just 22-years-old and five days before I interviewed him, he was helping to put 70 points past Italy at Twickenham in just his second Test match for England. Two weeks before that, he was winning the English Premiership for Harlequins. Whirlwind is nothing for Marcus Smith. Nothing troubles him, not even team mates he’d never met before his brilliant Lions debut against the Stormers.
“I’m not very good with names but everybody has been so welcoming and introducing themselves,” said Smith. Imagine that. He turned in a virtuoso, controlling performance from fly-half in a 49-3 win at the Cape Town Stadium with team mates he’d met three or four days earlier many of whose names he couldn’t remember.
There is one aspect of this tour which has not been diluted – in fact, it has been emphatically emphasised. The desire to wear the Lions jersey is like a passion you can feel, weigh and wear. It is so tangible it’s like you could eat it. Although I imagine it would be tough on the tongue and bitter to the palate if and when the moment of non-selection arrived, which it did for the majority of the squad on Wednesday.
“There are many things you dream of and aspire to as a young kid growing up playing rugby,” Maro Itoje told me on Tuesday, “but I think it’s fair to say that playing for the Lions, and winning a series with the Lions, is right at the top of the list.”
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I know there are contractual reasons behind the team staying in town, but seems like an own goal to me. Surely another plan with a similar type setup in the Winelands would have been better for us, and probably safer too.