JM2K6 wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:12 am
I think the Lions are a great concept really fucking badly handled for a while now. The biggest problem they face is that for NH fans part of the excitement is going up against a traditional rugby superpower. For this to work, the traditional rugby superpowers need to be superpowers. This runs contrary to what we want outside of the Lions - we want everyone to be super competitive and for the NH sides to be on a par with the SH sides.
As we are firmly in the post-NZ-hegemony era of the sport, what are we currently looking forward to with the Lions? The best tour was 97, which was the last hurrah of the amateur era, and before England had become the professional juggernaut that won the 2003 world cup. 97 was a group of likeable players on a still fairly haphazard tour, with real drama and intrigue in the gruelling series of tour matches, and a genuine David vs Goliath matchup in the Tests where the Lions gave it everything to turn over their opponents. We won't ever get that again - no matter how good the opposition is. Professionalism has changed everything.
97 - last of the amateur era ethos, SA a genuine power a tier above any of the NH sides. All time classic.
2001 - England on the up as the NH side with a lead in the professionalism stakes, Australia the 99 WC champs and with their last great batch of players. The 2nd best tour of the pro era where most games mattered and the Test series was excellent.
2005 - Ruined by tour changes, Woodward's "professional" approach to the dirt-trackers, an injury glut, and damaged by both England's legacy as WC winners and the rest of the NH teams being so inconsistent. NZ were incredible and the Lions offered no resistance. The first properly rubbish pro tour.
2009 - Tour matches downgraded, the 97 spirit completely gone as everything was about the Tests. On paper this should've been up there with 97 series. The Test series itself was pretty good but the rest of it was a waste of time.
2013 - Lions favourites, Australia pretty mediocre. Boring as shit tour with a really negative approach on the field and to selection. Lions struggled to beat an inferior Australia side. Not a great advert for the Lions.
2017 - horrible tour before the Tests. Miserable rugby from the Lions. Embarrassing selection decisions and Gatland using the Tour to further Welsh development offset by the series at least being close. Lions thumped in the first Test, snuck past 14-man NZ in the second, and drew the 3rd after an incomprehensible refereeing change of mind.
2021 - oh my god. An absolute abortion of a tour. Covid played its part but the most miserable, negative, mind-alteringly-dull approach taken by both teams made this practically unwatchable. It was a dreadful decision to have Gatland involved from the start and so it proved. If you'd wanted a tour designed to end the Lions, you'd struggle to come up with something more appropriate than this.
Professional rugby doesn't really do big upsets that often, especially not on a tour, and it usually demands pragmatism over romanticism. The Lions system works best where there is a romantic element to it, otherwise its grasping commercial roots are laid bare and it becomes a chore. The story of the Lions in the pro era has been one of slow-but-accelerating downfall from a high peak, where the money is paramount and the series result is used to justify ruining the rest of it. Modern rugby just doesn't seem to lend itself to the sort of tour and the sort of contests we hope for.
