Series win and a commercial success but have Lions lost their soul?

Times

a day ago

The morning after the night before. A group of British & Irish Lions players were sipping whiskey sours in the lobby of their hotel. Some had not slept. All of them were determined to enjoy the final moments of this eight-week adventure; sad it was over, proud to have won the Test series and now in desperate need of a holiday and a chance to decompress at the end of a 12-month season.
All the experts insist that workload is unsustainable and yet every two years — for a World Cup and a Lions tour — it is explained away as being an aberration. No wonder players are looking admiringly towards the R360 model and a global franchise season promising fat paychecks for no more than 18 games in a season.
Ben Calveley, the Lions chief executive, said on Sunday that he had neither been contacted by anyone from R360 nor sought out talks with representatives from the new venture. But he insisted: 'Our players remain committed to the Lions. We are very confident that our position in the future is secure.'
What does that future look like? Much of it will be shaped by the outcome of a review into this tour to Australia. The Lions say they will engage with all stakeholders. Andy Farrell, the head coach who is in pole position to lead the team in New Zealand in four years' time, will contribute once he is home and the dust has settled.
The Lions are already planning for a more international feel to the 2029 tour to New Zealand, with fixtures against other nations being proposed in the build-up to the Test series. This is an important move.
The Lions were dissatisfied with the quality of the tour-game opposition they faced in Australia. They gain very little from walkovers and the games hold no interest for fans. The next Australia tour, scheduled to be 12 years from now, certainly has to be designed differently.
The best tour game the Lions played was the last non-Test match, against a combined First Nations & Pasifika (FNP) team in Melbourne, when finally they ran full force into a scratch side unified by their culture and history. The quality may not have been that high but it was physical and competitive; it was a test. The Lions want more of that.
New Zealand's provincial scene is stronger than Australia's, plus the Maori All Blacks will provide determined opposition. Maybe bring back the FNP XV, too. Games against Fiji or Japan are also on the agenda as part of a ten-match schedule, for both performance and commercial reasons.
'Would we be interested in bringing in, for example, a Fiji or a Japan? And you can think of other countries as well. Yes we would. That is a conversation we will have with New Zealand Rugby to see if that is possible. We would be interested in something like that,' Calveley said.
'We've had a wonderful tour here in Australia and it is a hundred per cent our ambition to return. We would want the next one to be bigger and better than this one.
'If we're looking at bringing in new components into the tour, it's because we're interested in building relationships with those markets. There's an opportunity to grow even further. That's what that will be.'
The thorny issue of midweek games before Test matches must be addressed. For the FNP XV game, the Lions drafted in additional players in order to protect the Test squad, which suggests it is an inconvenience. Those temporary call-ups can lead to consternation in the squad and accusations of the jersey, and the whole Lions concept, being devalued.
So scrap that game? Well, four players — Owen Farrell, Blair Kinghorn, Jac Morgan and James Ryan — played themselves into the squad for the second Test. So it is a tricky balance. 'We need to have a look at that,' Calveley said.
The Lions' on-field performance will be judged a success in the review. And rightly so. They won the series 2-1, which is not an achievement to be sniffed at. The Wallabies are not world-beaters by any means but the Lions did not exist as a team eight weeks ago.
Andy Farrell's men fell short of their stated aims: to win 3-0 and return home as one of the greatest Lions teams in history. Had they achieved it, then statistically it would have been true. The Lions do not win many Test series — only two in the professional era — and it is almost a century since they managed a clean sweep.
But it would have jarred to bracket them with the 1974 team, who went undefeated in 22 games in South Africa, winning 21. Where would this Lions team rank against the others in the professional era? Even with a 3-0, they would not have been rated above the teams of 1997 (series winners), 2001 (series losers), 2009 (series losers), 2017 (drawn series) or 2013 (series winners).
So, a 2-1 result against the sixth-best team in the world is a more accurate reflection of their status. The Lions took the series with a positive points difference of plus one; the tightest series, and one that became compelling and brilliantly competitive once the Wallabies finally turned up.
Will Skelton changed the dynamic when he came in for the second Test; throwing his weight around, picking fights, driving the Wallabies forward and pushing the Lions off their game. Suddenly Australia had discovered some fight and character. What if they had played like that in Brisbane in the first Test?
The Lions had to stage a record fightback in front of a record crowd of 90,000 to win the second Test in Melbourne from 23-5 down and take the series with a last-gasp try from Hugo Keenan. It was one of the great Lions occasions.
Australia then played the biblical conditions in Sydney much more smartly than the Lions. They dominated the scrum, destroyed the Lions lineout and bossed the breakdown to control the game. The touring side lost key players but they were poor.
When they were at their best — for the first half in Brisbane and the comeback in Melbourne — Tadhg Beirne, Tom Curry and Ellis Genge were the driving forces. Even on Saturday, those three dug deep to try to turn the game. They all had great tours. Beirne was the rightful player of the series.
The unsung hero would have to be Pierre Schoeman, who took on the valuable role of the midweek player who just bought into everything the Lions was about, committing fully to the squad in support of the Test side.
The Lions stand for more than just winning. The review will judge the Australia tour against four criteria: rugby/high-performance, commercial/profit, Lions fan engagement and community outreach, which covers their ambassadorial responsibilities.
All four elements supposedly hold equal billing, although the experience on this tour would suggest otherwise. The hearts and minds element, which used to be so important for the Lions, has been denuded.
Calveley disagreed, stating the Lions had got the balance right. In doing so he rather prejudged the review. He should wait and listen to feedback from sponsors, broadcast partners and the many people the Lions engaged with across Australia. It will paint a different picture.
Perhaps the best metaphor was the sight of David Nucifora, the head of high-performance, covering a changing room camera with a towel on Saturday. It portrayed a complete lack of feel for the situation and how the team is perceived.
Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager.
The terms and conditions of the tour agreement did not cover what might happen in a lightning break and so up went the towel. That same attitude has been prevalent across the tour. Ask the student who was blocked from asking a question of Beirne when the Lions were at his school.
Ts&Cs have been cited as a reason to restrict independent media access (but not inhouse cameras) and to block the FNP team from selecting Pete Samu. He was rejoining a Super Rugby side but had not played for one last season, so could not be picked for the representative side on a technicality. Again, a lack of feel.
The Lions need to work out what they stand for. The players and coaches have been generous with their time and are interesting, engaging people. But they are let down by an inelegant infrastructure that has failed to win over hearts and minds in Australia.
In our podcast series The Red Lions, before the tour, Willie John McBride, Matt Dawson and Martyn Williams all expressed concerns that the Lions were becoming too commercial and losing their soul. The Lions trade on that romantic reputation of being rugby's great adventurers but they do not always live up to those same values.
They sell an 1888 whiskey and yet no players attended a ceremony at the grave of Robert Seddon, captain of the first Lions team from 1888 who died in a boating accident midway through the inaugural tour. Calveley and Ieuan Evans, the Lions chairman,were there.
It will all be justified in the review by record levels of social media engagement. This tour, arranged as a joint venture with Rugby Australia, will be the most profitable ever undertaken by the Lions. Howden, the shirt sponsors, paid £6million for the rights.
The players are on a profit-share arrangement and expected to receive about £100,000 each. The Test venues operated at 98 per cent capacity, with 40,000 Lions fans making the journey.
The sold-out pre-tour game in Dublin against Argentina was another commercial triumph, although playing games at home is another erosion of the mystique of the Lions.
The home game is now baked into the planning unless the Lions receive a better offer to play abroad. That is possible, and should be preferable. Play the Pumas in Barcelona or Buenos Aires; meet France in Paris or New Orleans.
'We are really keen on doing more in the pre-tour element. You might bring different countries into that space,' Calveley said. 'Could you see us being interested in doing something with the French or in North America, for example? The answer is yes. We will look to capitalise on that in the future.'