If Andy Farrell wants Lions to roar it is time to talk like Jim Telfer

Times

21-06-2025

How is it, I thought, watching the 2025 British & Irish Lions play Argentina at the Aviva Stadium on Friday evening, that Ireland don't get this kind of support in Dublin? This was a Lions XV without the Leinster 12, and with nine England players in the starting team. Yet the warmth of the capacity crowd was commensurate with the temperature of a beautiful summer's evening.
Why are there never as many green shirts in the stadium when Ireland play? Never as many white shirts at Twickenham as there were red ones at the Aviva? And how the fans willed the team in red to win. What is it that makes the Lions so popular? Why will 40,000 travel to Australia over the course of the next six weeks making each game look like a home match for the touring team?
Not forgetting the disappointment that comes with defeat. The game against Argentina was far better than warm-up matches usually are. For this, Argentina deserve most of the credit. They thrived on the sense of occasion and the opportunity to test themselves against the Lions. Without half of their first-choice team, they excelled. The Lions looked like a group of players still getting to know each other.
Unable to be at the stadium, I watched it on Sky and didn't warm to the punditry. Too sweet to be wholesome. Though we are fans and want the team to do well, we need tough analysis to better explain what the problems are and where the weaknesses lie. It says something about independent punditry when the most insightful post-match commentary comes from the losing coach.
'We lost enough ball there for a full tour, never mind a Test match against a good side like Argentina . . . throwing passes that were never on,' Andy Farrell said. 'But it wasn't just that, it was the aerial battle, the scraps on the floor. They were hungrier than us and that's just not acceptable.'
Towards the end of the TV coverage there was still time for another teaspoon of sugar from the Sky team. Alex Payne, the presenter, asked his panellists about the last time the Lions lost an opening warm-up game. Someone guessed 1997. It was the 1971 tour to New Zealand when the Lions began with two games in Australia, losing the first 15-11 to Queensland in Brisbane. 'That tour,' said Payne, 'was a relative success.'
Relative? I presume the presenter was trying a little irony, though there was nothing in his delivery to suggest as much. Fifty-four years have passed since that Carwyn James-coached squad became the first and still only Lions squad to have beaten the All Blacks in a Test series. At least for me, '71 was the moment the love affair began.
For years afterwards we felt that at long last the Kiwis might have some respect for how we played rugby in the northern hemisphere. We amused ourselves with the story that in bingo halls all over New Zealand, the man calling out the numbers would say, 'All the ones, legs 11'; 'Top of the house, 90'; 'Number 10, Barry John'.
Every so often I dip into a book read long ago, Terry McLean's account of the '71 tour, Lions Rampant. Each revisit recovers an unremembered gem. At the very first press conference given by the '71 Lions in Australia, McLean himself asked the tour manager, Doug Smith, if he was fearful of the Lions being distracted by the lure of young women in New Zealand and behaviour that would lead to indiscipline.
This is amusing because nowadays it would take a very brave rugby writer to publicly ask such a question. Smith never raised an eyebrow, nor blinked an eyelid. It was a matter, he said, they had discussed as a group before leaving home. 'It is a difficult problem,' he went on. 'As a medical practitioner in two or three villages in Essex, I am well aware of the disastrous incidence of pregnancies in young girls. All I can say is that we have put our chaps on their honour.'
Ah, for a beakerful of the amateur era.
It was the professional era that created the modern Lions phenomenon. The 1997 tour to South Africa was perhaps the most absorbing Lions experience of all. It was also the moment the Lions opened their front door and invited us into the living room as the forwards coach, Jim Telfer, spoke to the boys. There can't be anyone who has listened to Telfer and not been entranced.
Everything is in the delivery, though there is much in the content.
'There are two types of rugby players, boys,' Telfer said quietly, but with deadly seriousness. 'There's honest ones, and there's the rest. The honest player gets up in the morning and looks himself in the f***ing mirror, and sets his standard. Sets his stall out, and says, 'I'm going to get better. I'm going to get better. I'm going to get better.'
'He doesn't complain about the food, or the beds, or the referees. Or all these sorts of things.
'These are just peripheral things that weak players have always complained about. The dishonest player.
'If I tell a player he's too high, or he's not tight enough, he's too f***ing high. He's not tight enough. And that's it. I'm the judge, and not the player. And we accept that, and we do something about it . . .
'Two weeks. There's battles all along the way. There's a battle on Saturday. There's a battle next Wednesday. There's a battle the following Saturday. A battle the following Tuesday — until we're into the f***in' big arena. The one we'll be there on Saturday. And by that time the f***in' Lions have to make them f***in' roar for us.
'Because they'll be baying for blood. Let's hope it's f***ing Springbok blood. We're focused. From now on, kid gloves are off. It's bare-knuckle f***in' stuff. And only at the end of the day will the man that's standing on his feet win the f***in' battle.'
When the fly-on-the-wall documentary Living With Lions came out, Telfer was mildly shocked by the number of expletives he used. He was, after all, a headmaster, and there were many who disagreed with his language. A doctor wrote to him explaining that if he had spoken to him and his mates the way he spoke to his players, he would have walked out.
Having reflected on this, Telfer said he would have told the good doctor to keep walking and not come back. He did, however, apologise to his mum, who thought his language 'terrible'. Telfer's place in Lions history is sacrosanct.
Farrell will have a similar conversation with his players. They need to be honest. They need to get a lot better. This isn't the worst Lions squad but it is far from the best. Unless they become a united and fiercely committed group, they may lose to an Australia team that is improving but still some way from top class. There is some power up front but not enough, and a lack of pace and creativity in the backs. Too much now rests on the excellent Tommy Freeman.
I will fervently root for the Lions, as I always have. I think this comes down to one thing. For rugby fans in the home countries, the rivalries are intense and have been for years. Everyone accepts, though, that without the other countries there is no Six Nations. The only thing worse than losing to your neighbour is not being able to play against your neighbour.
When the chance comes, once every four years, to support the best guys from your rival teams, it's something to savour. Or maybe it's as simple as our home countries are our partner, the Lions are our lover.
Whichever, the Lions have about three weeks to find a Test-winning team. I wish them well.