The Lions Share

"They know what they want from their players - or they did when I played against them - and they pick men to do a specific job. They bank on experience, no matter how far back they have to go to get it, and they have been proved right. They work on the principle that once a player has established himself as a Springbok or All Black of genuine test class, then he will have that ability long after most people are prepared to write him off. And they are right. There is no substitute for experience.

"I remember trying to tell other players this after my first tour. I told them that Wales versus England at Cardiff Arms Park is one thing, but a series in South Africa and New Zealand is another thing entirely. It is far harder.

"Maybe it is because test series in South Africa and New Zealand do occur so frequently, and so Springboks and All Blacks gear themes up that much higher. But this I know for sure. The pressures of a series in South Africa and New Zealand are far more intense than the international championship in Europe." Now in case you think that the foregoing is the purest malarkey, let me hasten to assure you that I am quoting an Irishman. An Irish forward. A man  who played test Rugby in both South Africa and New Zealand. A man who even coached the British Lions on tour. The man is Sydney Millar. Comes from a place called Ballymena. You may have heard of it. You may not.

It could well be apparent to the more discerning readers of this magazine that J .R. has not always seen eye to eye with the Thoughts of the Various Maos that have emanated from that part of the woods, particularly on the subject of Rugby Union football. But on this occasion, nine years ago no less, I thought that your man had got the old sledgehammer right between the eyes on the head of the nail. His experience was my observation. It still is.

That being the case, it pains me to point out the marginal discrepancies that exist between the practical realism of the words at the start of this piece and the knackers-yard standard of horse-trading that has just been perpetrated in the name of the selection of the British Lions team to tour New Zealand in a few weeks' time.

It started with the captaincy when Ciaran Fitzgerald of Ireland was preferred to Peter Wheeler of England. This was one of the totally predictable pieces of incredulity, because for weeks past, the straws in the wind had been much more akin to a haystack in a hurricane, and those of us with eyes sufficiently rheumy with experience had been practically blinded by them.

Peter Wheeler is the best hooker in the world, and indeed, such is the ugly pass to which that once honourable trade has descended, it is almost true to say that he is the last hooker in the world. Take the handflap signal away from the rest and they could not hook a goldfish in a bowl.

Wheeler is one of the best forwards too. A killer of an Anglo-Saxon, and they are always the best. People like Maurice Colclough. Jim Syddall. Peter Wheeler. They are the people you want on your side.

That, of course, is just for starters. Wheeler has also played on two Lions tours and in seven test matches. He has captained Leicester to three consecutive victories in the John Player Cup, and he is one of the best after dinner speakers in the game. It is hard to think of anyone who fits Syd Millar's definition of an essential choice more precisely. So I suppose it is only par for the course for him to be dumped for a lad who has never even gone on a Lions tour, never mind played in a test match.

Of course, it could have turned out distinctly embarrassing if Wheeler had gone along as the second hooker. Ronnie Dawson found that with Bryn Meredith in New Zealand in 1959. But there was an easy way round that. Leave Peter Wheeler off the tour entirely. I anticipated that, too, in a piece I wrote weeks and weeks ago for the Rugby Union's own magazine.

I pointed out that according to the rules of the game that Bill McBride and Jim Telfer, manager and coach of the Lions, had enunciated, Wheeler was the only possible choice as captain. I also pointed out that not only would the goalposts be moved for that particular game, but the entire pitch would be spirited away to another country. Exactly the same thing has happened to South Africa on the cricket field, but John Carlisle and I are trying to do something about that, too. Pity we can't call an M.C.C. meeting about this Lions team.

All we can do, as I say, is point out the discrepancies. This is not difficult, though it is only fair to point out that selecting the team was only ever going to be a question of making the best of a bad job. I have just completed my 31st season of watching and reporting international Rugby football, and in terms of individual quality, the season just past has been the worst by a very long street indeed. This prospect is made even more disenchanting by the probability that the New Zealand test team will be much better than the Lions.

When I was in New Zealand eighteen months ago watching the Springbok tour, it was clear that provincial Rugby in the Land of the Long White Cloud is worse than it has ever been. Some of the historically great teams are so bad that they are not even in the first division of the New Zealand championship, and so the Saturday matches for the Lions ought to be nothing like as painful as they were in 1966. Not even for this Lions team.

The test matches, though, will be a vastly different matter. Alan Hewson is a better runner by a long way than anything the Lions have at full-back; Bernie Fraser and Stu Wilson are better wings; Stephen Pokere is probably the best outside centre in the world; if the All Blacks have a better scrum-half than Dave Loveridge, they will be well served indeed, and if Nicky Allen is anything like as good as he was before he was injured in 1980, the All Blacks will not be exactly overshadowed at fly-half.

Paul Koteka is a solid prop, Hika Reid has climbed heights as yet unsighted by Ciaran Fitzgerald and Colin Deans, Gary Whetton and Andy Haden are a productive pair of locks, and Mark Shaw and Murray Mexted comprise two thirds of a back row far better than anything the Lions have available.

The All Blacks only discernible weakness is in the tight, and their goalkicking is erratic too. So the priority in the Lions selection should have been the hardest possible tight forward selection. For that, Wheeler, Colclough and Syddall were absolutely essential. So was Graham Price. Not that Graham is the man he was, or anything like. He is well past his peak, but at least he has been up Everest a time or two, whereas the rest have only been for a stroll on Brecon Beacons.

The switchboard in my local village was jammed after the Lions team was announced. There was a queue of prop forwards and locks and hookers from Coventry and Gloucester and back again waiting to whistle in astonishment.

To a man, they could not understand how Ian Milne could possibly have been preferred to Ian Eidman at tight head. To a man they could not understand why Wheeler and Syddall were not bankers. To a man, they could not understand how Ian Stephens had crept in past Colin Smart (who had Milne out of the scrum in the Calcutta Cup match, despite the fact that he, Smart, had no second row). To a man, they could not believe, never mind understand, how Steve Boyle had come to be chosen at lock. Was it all an awful mistake. Did they mean Mick Doyle?

A fortnight before, Steve Boyle, ever a realist, had been on the radio in the West country. He was asked how he fancied his chances of selection for the Lions. "Me?" he asked incredulously. "You must be joking. I've got no chance."

Clearly Stephen Brent Boyle should have been a Lions selector. As I say, if you have any brains, the years teach you to anticipate most of the barmy selections in a Lions team, but the selection of Boyle flabbergasted even me. So did the selection of Clive Woodward instead of Paul Dodge. Woodward is so lacking in confidence after his shoulder operation that he is not even sure he wants to play the game, never mind play in a test.

And in any case, what is the point of picking a potentially class runner like him in a midfield which otherwise is based exclusively on the idea of knocking the opposition over? It makes about as much sense as playing David Trick on the left wing for England against Ireland - and yet Trick, for all his agonies at Lansdowne Road, has far more potential in him than any of the wingers who ARE going with the Lions. No less an authority than Mike Gibson says, "I wouldn't mind playing inside that of pace."

The  same sort of strategic inconsistencies are apparent in the selection for the back row. No one admires John O'Driscoll more than do, but how on earth is he going play number five in a line out with Haden, Shaw and Mexted at four, five and six on the other side? And how can Jim Calder play open side in that sort of set-up? As I say, it won't matter outside the tests, but inside the tests, it will matter very much indeed.

The other problem is that the Scottish loose forwards are all pretty hot going forward, but none of them are very good going back. This is why the failure of the England selectors to discern the lack of scrummaging power in their second row has done so much damage to the balance of the Lions' selection.

If Maurice Colclough ever pushed his hardest alongside Steve Bainbridge, the England scrum went round like a top. At least when Colclough was injured, the England scrum stopped going round. It just went backwards, except against Scotland. And forwards like John Scott, who would do really well in New Zealand, disappeared into oblivion with it.

So much injustice has been perpetrated in this particular Lions' selection that I have left the biggest ether jammer till last. Whatever Peter Wheeler and the rest think about it all must be as nothing compared with the thoughts of Keith Robertson. You talk aboul utility players! Here is a lad who can play fly-half, centre AND wing, all to international standard, and he gets left off the team in favour of a stack of heavies, and a chap who was a tidy full-back a year ago  and who has since played half of an unconvincing game in the centre in an emphatically beaten team in Paris.

The tragedy is that most of the Lions' hopes will rest on Terry Holmes or Ollie Campbell at half-back, and as we saw in South Africa in 1980, both are vulnerable to injury - Holmes because of the way he plays, and Campbell

because of the way he is built. Both are bound to be targets, and if Campbell does get shot down, the whole shape of the Lions' midfield will go down with him, because John Rutherford is nothing like as good a tactical kicker.

Even before the Lions' team was picked, Dr. Danie Craven, the president of the South African Rugby Board, said, "The Lions won't win a single test in New Zealand."

A lot of money will be going on that particular proposition.