Playing the Lions series anywhere but SA will make it just another soulless game
It feels strange to be the one to say this.
But recent reports of Australia offering themselves as hosts for the British and Irish Lions series is as about as palatable as drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth.
And while there are several issues with hosting the tour to South Africa later this year, mostly due to Covid-19 and the speed at which vaccines will be available locally, when it comes to the Lions tour everyone seems to be missing the point a bit.
There is no doubt that the tour is a money-spinner. Outside of the Rugby World Cup, it is the largest revenue earner for rugby and should be something that is seen as sacred in rugby circles.
It is – essentially – the only rugby tour left on the calendar. The only real rugby tour in the sport now that the professional game has robbed the sport of those midweek clashes of touring national sides that would go down in folklore.
Nowadays, professional rugby players go from business class plane seats to hotels to training grounds to matches to business class plane seats. That is the nature of professional sport.
But rugby always had something different. It always had the tales of yesteryear when provincial teams would be able to claim a famous victory.
Anyone Welsh will easily launch into their lager and tell you about the famous day Llanelli beat the All Blacks. These are legendary games, and every single Lions tour game counted among them.
Having been on two Lions tours, little did we know that the 1997 win by Northern Transvaal would be the last time outside a test the Lions would lose in South Africa?
The 1997 tour was touted by the British press at the time as one that “saved” the Lions brand, as the test series victory was savoured across the world.
In 2009, the drama was no different and the Lions were once again questioned in a professional world. But the enthralling three-test series (or at least the first two) count among the most intense games of rugby ever played in the test arena.
In 2017, the way the Lions came back to draw the series with the All Blacks is something that will last for a long time.
The Lions are special. The travelling band of fans are special and the challenge and banter that goes on in a tour like that are like nothing else on the rugby calendar.
Already the tour was reduced to eight fixtures, robbing those outside the regular test cities of seeing the team travel across the country, and now Covid threatens to rob us all of the experience of hosting the Lions once again.
I know the good folks at SA Rugby are trying everything in their power to get the tour to take place, but in a time where rugby revenues have been squeezed, they have to, unfortunately, look at the bottom line.
So playing a series in the UK will make financial sense but little else. Ditto with Australia, which serves the purpose of a game with fans, but little else either.
And the question has to be asked: Why should Australia reap the benefit of the tour and then get their own tour in four years time? If they’re so keen, why not simply swop tours with SA and see the Lions come here in four years time?
The point of all this seems to be financial. And that’s a pity.
Because the Lions have always represented something more than a rugby game.
And while we talk about the experience of playing in such games for players, there is also the experience for fans. They see the team every 12 years and have to be reasonably lucky to get a ticket, it should be mentioned.
Not to mention the spinoffs and the cash injection into the economy from the touring fans.
So while England and Ireland apparently refuse to postpone the tour for a year, saying it would hamper their World Cup preparations, surely the concept of the Lions should be more sacred than anything else?
And here again, the question arises, where are World Rugby in protecting the product and doing their bit to help make sure the tour happens?
Playing the series in the UK or Australia may get the games played, but it will destroy the Lions as a romantic rugby ideal.
And nobody should be happy with that.
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