From all-out brawls to eye-gouging and worse: a brief history of Lions Tour violence

Irish Times

7 hours ago

Expect some conflict. Sit back and watch the claret flow. Take in some dust-ups and assaults, and hope the
Lions
get their retaliation in first. Bin the political correctness.
The
game against Argentina last Saturday at the Aviva Stadium
was not like what may be coming down the line at the Lions, with a reasonable chance of some traditional brutality on the field.
Why? Because that's the way Lions' tours always have been, a journey of character tests, challenges and physical melees, this first tranche of five episodes beginning on Saturday against Western Force in Perth before Queensland Reds, Waratahs, ACT Brumbies and an Australian and New Zealand invitational mix.
The run-in games are, as history has shown, a softening-up process, a mincing machine where club players on the fringes of the national side, as well as those in Joe Schmidt's Wallabies squad, are playing to hold their place or earn their place.
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The reputations of the touring players are there to be shredded, with folklore telling us nefarious methods come with the playbook.
It has always been that way, and not just in the last century. From Duncan McRae raining down punches on
Ronan O'Gara
in 2001, to the
tour-ending spear tackle on Brian O'Driscoll by New Zealand's Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu
in 2005 and the gouging of Luke Fitzgerald at Loftus Versfeld in 2009, foul play has featured prominently on Lions tours.
'This is your f**king Everest, boys,' Jim Telfer told a room of bowed heads in the 1997 Living with the Lions documentary.
[
Lions v Western Force: Kick-off time, team news, where to watch and more
]
That's the way they have always set up, primed to play on the edge and it's the way the opposition have also been hardwired over the last 50 years or more.
The most famous bout of thuggery was in
South Africa
1974, although the plan for Lions players to punch their nearest rival had a gestation period of six years following the 1968 tour and a match against Eastern Transvaal.
Derek Quinnell of the Lions is tackled during the brutal 1974 tour match against South Africa. Photograph: Allsport
There Wales prop John O'Shea was the first Lion ever to be sent off for foul play. Pelted with oranges on his way to the locker room, he was blamed for the punch-up. His defence was that he had retaliated after an opponent attacked scrumhalf Roger Young.
Leaving the pitch O'Shea was then hit by a spectator, triggering a tunnel brawl that involved reserves, officials and police as play continued.
Then 1968 tumbled forwards to 1971 when the New Zealand touring squad travelled to Canterbury. The Lions won the match, but maybe lost in the battle when Irish prop Ray McLoughlin chipped a bone at the base of his left thumb and Sandy Carmichael was hospitalised with multiple fractures of his cheekbone.
Carmichael, the first player to win 50 caps for Scotland, was doing what props do and bored into the opposition at scrums.
For that, Alister Hopkinson, the opposing prop, landed a few punches on the Scot with the damaging shot that fractured his cheek bone in five places coming later via a backhanded fist that caught him in a lineout.
McLoughlin's thumb injury occurred when a fight erupted with players from both sides pummelling each other near the touchline.
Not the most accurate of blows, McLoughlin landed his shot on the head of Grizz Wyllie, breaking his left thumb. Grizz also punched Fergus Slattery as the Blackrock player unwisely held on to his jersey.
The 1974 tour to South Africa was broiling before it even took off and its essence was the personality of captain Willie John McBride and his '99 one-in, all-in' spirit.
Speaking to The Telegraph four years ago, former England forward Roger Uttley recalled the mood set by McBride when the squad had gathered in London.
'Before we had even left the country, we were gathered in the Churchill Hotel just near Marble Arch and outside we could hear the anti-apartheid demonstrations in full flow,' Uttley said.
'Willie spoke and you could hear a pin drop. 'Gentlemen. If you have any doubts about going on this tour, I want you to be big enough to stand up now and leave the room. I have been to South Africa before and there is going to be a lot of intimidation, a lot of cheating. So if you're not up for a fight, there's the door'.
'No one moved. I can still remember the silence and the hairs on the back of the neck rising.'
The third Test in Port Elizabeth was the defining match of the series for its choreographed violence. Known as the Battle of the Boet Erasmus Stadium, Scotland's Gordon Brown punched his opposite number, Johan de Bruyn, so hard the Orange Free State man's glass eye flew out and landed in the mud.
'So, there we are, 30 players, plus the ref, on our hands and knees scrabbling about in the mire looking for this glass eye,' recalled Brown, who died from cancer in 2001. 'Eventually, someone yells 'Eureka!' whereupon De Bruyn grabs it and plonks it straight back in the gaping hole in his face.'
After Brown's death, De Bruyn presented his widow with the glass eye in a specially made trophy.
When another fight broke out, the Wales full-back JPR Williams sprinted over half the length of the pitch to deliver a right hook to second row 'Moaner' van Heerden.
'That's not something I'm proud of,' orthopaedic surgeon Williams said later.
It wasn't always South Africa who transgressed, although the Springboks, of all the nations toured by the Lions, prided themselves on physicality.
In 1989 the second Test against the Wallabies became the Battle of Ballymore when the Lions scrumhalf Rob Jones kicked off with Nick Farr-Jones at a scrum put-in.
From there it was bedlam, with the commentary left to call it as it happened. 'They are all joining in now. There're punches galore. It's an all-in brawl,' the exasperated commentator said. 'It was [initially] between the half backs, but everyone joined in.'
The wasn't much French referee Rene Hourquet could do about it, and when Dai Young later aimed a boot at Steve Cutler in a ruck another free-for-all kicked off.
With the century turning, three tours in a row in 2001, 2005 and 2009 would see three Irish players targeted in different violent ways.
In 2001 Ronan O'Gara's came up against New South Wales Waratahs midway through the second half. The images are of a kneeling McRae raining down the punches. Replays show that between the glancing blows and the fully landed punches as he held O'Gara with his left arm, the Munster outhalf took 11 shots resulting in eight stitches around his left eye.
O'Gara's running commentary to the doctor as he was getting stitched in the changing room said it all.
Duncan McRae, left, and Ronan O'Gara during that 2001 Lions game in Sydney. Photograph: Adam Pretty/Allsport
'F**king cheap shots,' he said breathing heavily as the doctors carefully pulled his face together.
'Caught me with the first one. Couldn't f**king defend myself. F**king trying to look after the ball.'
The spear tackle on O'Driscoll four years later might come across as the most calculated act.
It took just over 40 seconds in the 2005 first Test against New Zealand in Christchurch to end his participation in the match and the tour and to sideline him for seven months.
Calculated how? Well, the ball was with New Zealand lock Ali Williams 30 feet away when Umaga and Mealamu almost cartoonishly turned the Lions' centre upside down and rammed him into the ground dislocating his shoulder.
'It happened in slow motion and I knew I had to get my head out of the way,' O'Driscoll said on Irish television after the tour. 'My shoulder took the brunt of the fall.'
In Umaga's book Up Close, published in 2007, in a classless comment he called O'Driscoll a 'sook' or crybaby.
In the 2009 tour to South Africa, the Lions lost their first Test match, making the second vital to save the series. On the day the Loftus Versfeld Stadium bristled with hostility.
'The South African fans appeared to be waving as our bus approached, but as we got closer we realised they were all doing the 'w****r' sign,' Welsh prop Adam Jones write in Bomb, his 2015 autobiography.
Again, the match was brutal, physical and unforgiving and as Fitzgerald found out it quickly became insidious. Less than a minute in Springbok flanker Schalk Burger gouged the Irish winger.
'Luke said he had to pull Burger's hand off his eyes. That's not sport, that's not the way we play. It is not the gentlemanly thing to do – it's disgusting,' Wales and Lions' scrumhalf Mike Phillips said afterwards.
And Burger's punishment? A slap on the wrist. He sat it out for 10 minutes. With the Lions, that's the way they roll.