If there was a GPS system in place to track where I travelled in the previous two British and Irish Lions tours that I covered as a journalist, it would show one of the key points of difference to the so-called normal times and the rather unique environment everyone worked with in 2021.
In 1997 a post-tour download of the GPS would have shown a route around the country that would have included Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, East London, Johannesburg, Witbank, Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Vanderbijlpark (where the Lions based themselves for the highveld games), Welkom and perhaps a few other places now forgotten.
In 2009 there were fewer ports of call but a lot of time was spent moving between Durban, Johannesburg and the Cape, and I can recall a drive that spanned in Port Elizabeth before heading to KZN. I enjoy being on the move so they were fun times.
LIKE BEING ON A STATIONARY BIKE
Where did I travel to during the 2021 series? Well, if it wasn’t for the 20 odd kilometres between my home and Cape Town Stadium, the GPS would show the same measurements or map that it does when I train on my indoor stationary bike. In other words, a journey that went nowhere.
The series was initially meant to include two tests on the highveld in addition to one in Cape Town, but due to the prevalence of Covid in Gauteng at the beginning of the tour, the show moved to Cape Town Stadium for the entirety of the series. The games against the Emirates Lions and Cell C Sharks (twice), all in Gauteng, were the only ones played away from Cape Town.
Going to the match venue on game days was a pleasure in comparison to sitting at home doing everything by Zoom conference call. But even those days weren’t plain sailing. Journalists, like everyone else working on the test matches, had to go through a Covid testing procedure before being admitted.
Fortunately, it wasn’t the test that involves a snooker cue being pushed through your nose to your brain. That is what that test feels like. It was the other one, the one that just tickles your nose. But still, it wasn’t fun, and then came the wait for the SMS that would inform you that you didn’t have Covid and could proceed into the venue. You’d go through that procedure every week.
My tests came back negative every time, and that was surely the first time in my life I celebrated a negative result in any kind of test. Actually, there shouldn’t be too much boastfulness about my clean slate in those tests, for there was a bit of a cheat: I elected to miss the SA A midweek game after being advised that my vaccination earlier that day may cause me to show up positive.
That was at least the advice given by some of the SA Rugby people, one of whom was speaking from the experience of returning a positive result immediately after being vaccinated.
SUCH WEIRD TIMES
Hoo boy, those were such weird times, and that particular day in question, the night of the SA A game, coincided with the period that the KZN riots were at their worst. The experiences some of my friends from that province were living through were 1600 kilometres away, but the vaccination story sounded like a good excuse to cocoon on a cold winter’s night at home.
Not that much was missed by doing that. The match day experiences during the series were pretty bleak. It was hard not to think during the drive through relatively empty streets to the stadium about what the scene would have been like had it been a Lions series played during normal times.
What makes a Lions tour special was perhaps best summed up by the scenes in Durban on the day of the first test of the 2009 series. Some of the Springboks who played that day have told me about the buzz they got when the bus taking them to Kings Park passed through wave after wave of red clad Lions supporters. And the shock they got when they walked out of the stadium tunnel and were confronted by a sea of red on the open stand.
The party atmosphere after all the tests was something you only ever experience during a Lions tour, and it lasted long into the night and into the following morning. In 2021 there was no such thing - after the game there was a post-match press conference that journalists weren’t even permitted to attend in the flesh even though it was happening at the same venue.
Instead, we would link up by Zoom, as if we were at home, and frankly we might as well have been at home. Because of the strict Covid protocols in place at the time, every effort was made to keep us journalists as separate as possible, and while we broke the rules, officially we were supposed to stick in groups of four or five to separate hospitality suites on one of the upper levels of the stadium.
The broadcast media were separated from the print, and I can well remember Nick Mallett greeting me by waving at me from the television gantry, which was about 50 metres away, before one of the games. It was my only communication with one of the television people during the whole series. They obviously had a separate entrance into the stadium, as did those officials who were allowed to be present. In short, there was none of the social aspect you’d normally get at a test match.
THE ALCOHOL BAN WAS TOUGH ON US
And of course, and I have deliberately left this until late in this piece so readers don’t overestimate the importance of it to the members of the Fourth Estate…but yes, there was the drink aspect too. The alcohol ban was still in place, at least at the start of the series, and if it was ever possible to ever feel sorry for the UK and Irish media people, that was the time.
Society had reopened to some extent in their home countries when they came to South Africa (actually they never had an alcohol ban at any time), so it must have been particularly disturbing for them to arrive here and be told that this would not be a tour where you’d hear those often repeated words “Okay guys, that is done now, anyone for a drink?”
My supersport.com colleague Brenden Nel proved a godsend to the guys from the London newspapers, The Times and The Sunday Times, because he managed to smuggle them some wine at the start of the tour. But he’d have had to load a lorry with wine for it to last a whole tour and I doubt he did that because Brenden is just a journalist, he’s not Ernie Els.
From memory, there may have been some beers supplied in the press room after the last test, but there was a catch there too: Although we’d been given special passes to be out after curfew (believe it or not we qualified as essential services!), it somehow didn’t seem wise to be driving around after curfew with alcohol in the blood.
Of course, the bars and restaurants were either closed or didn’t serve alcohol, certainly in the early stages of the tour, and I do wonder if all of this contributed to the grumpiness of the visiting media.
I avoid participating on Twitter, and some of the idiotic things some colleagues did on that medium during the series aptly underline the reason for my avoidance, but I do know a bit of a Twitter war ensued between the SA guys and our overseas counterparts after that infamous Rassie video.
ONLY SCRIBE TO DRINK WITH THE ENEMY
As it turned out, I was the only local scribe who ever got to do what is normally such an enjoyable part of a Lions tour: Socialise with the visiting media people. That happened in the build-up to the third test, when I was invited by False Bay Rugby Club to an event they were putting on for the UK media.
Alcohol had obviously been unbanned by then, and the evening was like an oasis in the desert. I’ve been in this game for a sod of a long time, as have many of the UK guys, so we know each other well. It was great to get to exchange views over a pint rather than over cyberspace and it was generally agreed that had we been able to do that more often, there might have been more agreement on some issues.
Instead, there was little contact between the groups, and the hot air generated by Twitter left some feeling that they had become enemies of people they’d been friends with for years. It was all quite silly, but also sad. A Lions tour is supposed to be an enjoyable experience, but that one wasn’t. I was one of the lucky few who was present for all three tests, but it was a soulless experience. It won’t be the fun part of any book.