Feel the pain

It's a hard war to win and only the toughest survive according to men who've been in the trenches.

"They don’t respect you. They don’t rate you. The only way to be rated is to stick one on them. To get right up in their faces and turn them back, knock ‘em back. (Harsh Scottish accent rising) Out do what they can do! Out jump them! Out shone (sic) them! Out ruck them! Out tackle them until they are f***ing sick of it…The moments arriving for the greatest game of your f***ing lives."

Lions forward coach Jim Telfer addressing his pack before the first Test in South Africa, 1997.

It may have become apparent to everyone recently that hard men tend to dictate the course of rugby match. Especially a Test series in South Africa. To confirm this we went back to the source. We sought out men like Fergus Slattery, Colm Tucker and Jeremy Davidson from as diverse clubs as Blackrock, Shannon and Dungannon, or in current dialect: Leinster, Munster and Ulster.

These are men who earned their thousand yard stares on the rock-hard high veldt. By now they must be tired of discussing the war so we attempted to keep our questions succinct. We asked them about life in the trenches.

A digression was inevitable and we couldn’t help bringing 1974’s version of “spear-gate” into modern times as Slattery was asked to recount the curious incident of referee Max Baise disallowing his match winning try in the fourth Test.

“Days do pass without people mentioning it to me but not a week,” says the one-time tear away. “He awarded a five yard scrum. The referee, Max Baise, ran in behind the goal line after (my) break from the 22 down the touchline. He was in the wrong place basically.”

The late Clem Thomas noted in The History of the British and Irish Lions that Springbok scrumhalf Paul Bayvel was yelling: “He hasn’t touched it, no try, no try.” His countryman obliged and the last game of the tour ended moments later at 13 points apiece, denying the ’74 Lions a perfect record from 22 battles.

Other moments have taken on mythical status from the last, great marathon Lions tour. It all comes back to the refusal of Willie John McBribe’s team to buckle under the most intense physical intimidation. That, essentially, is what playing, and winning, a Test series in South Africa is all about.

Slattery bluntly explains the idea behind the infamous 99 Call that ensured a 15-man reaction to South African violence in each half of the defining third Test.

“The basic principal is not to take any shit from them. If there was any shit to just deal with it. Don’t give an inch. In that sense Willie John was right. Try and dominate physically, legally or illegally, hence the concept of 99. That was the message. If there is any messing, bang it out there and then. Don’t let it fester.

“How it came about was when they picked their team for the third Test they brought what we would call a couple of gorillas back into the pack. Hatchet men. They also picked a number eight at scrumhalf. A guy called Gerrie Soonekus. He could play scrumhalf but he was a number eight so their intention was very clear. They were going to try and take us apart.

“The plan was to not let them do it. The first 40 minutes of that game was the most physical 40 minutes of the tour. I wouldn’t say it was particularly dirty but it was very, very physical.

“We just stood up to it, handily, I would say.”

The 20th match of that tour sparked another hotly debated incident. The Lions eventually defeated Natal (“the most British of all the provinces,” wrote Thomas) 34-6 but not before their iconic captain Tommy Bedford was flattened, twice, to spark the rare sight of crowd unrest in a rugby stadium. Oranges and beer bottles were flung onto the field forcing McBride to gather his troops on half-way for 11 minutes as the police calmed the situation.

“The pitch looked like an orange groove,” remembers Slattery. “Seriously, there were thousands on the pitch and when they ran out of oranges they threw on their cushions. There was a bit of a fraca at the back of the lineout and JPR Williams ran from 50 yards and clocked Tommy Bedford. That’s why the crowd went mad. The game wasn’t particularly violent. Run of the mill stuff. It was more the crowd and the fact it was Tommy Bedford.”

Imagine how the Limerick faithful would react if Paul O’Connell was taken out in Thomond Park.

The general point abides, and to paraphrase Sinatra, if you can make it in South Africa you can make it anywhere.

In 1980 Shannon RFC were finally given a Lion. Colm Tucker started the last two Tests but Bill Beaumount’s men were saddled with the unwanted title of the “unlucky tourists,” winning every game but losing the series 3-1. To a man reared on Munster Senior Cup mud (blood) baths, the violence was akin to supping a hot bowl of soup on a cold winter’s night. Heart warming stuff for a man of the Shannon cloth.

“It is very physical down there. They are very big, square men. Six foot eight, you know? If you don’t get involved with them you are going to lose seriously.”

Memories come flooding back; altitude training, disappearing for months to the sunshine as a deep recession crippled Ireland. Experiencing signs of Apartheid’s eventual demise as multi-racial opposition were sent out to meet the visitors.

“It’s a great tour, a long tour, once described as rugby’s version of a university education,” says Tucker. “But what a wonderful country.”

The forwards held up their end of the bargain in a Port Elisabeth monsoon only to lose the third and decisive Test in dramatic circumstances. Tucker plants responsibility firmly at the doorstep of a young English centre named Clive Woodward.

“The third test belonged to Clive Woodward. It made him famous or is it infamous, whichever you like. He mollycoddled the ball into touch, turned his back, and when he turned around again (Gerrie) Germishuys had gone over after a quick throw. We lost the game 12-10 and the series was gone.”

For 17 years the most perilous of rugby challenges gathered dust before apartheid was finally dissolved and South Africa, having wrestled the 1995 World Cup away from Sean Fitzpatrick’s All Blacks, welcomed the red wave back again. And what a tour it was. The first of the professional age.

The eight forwards in that room with Telfer come easily to mind: Tom Smith, Keith Wood, Paul Wallace, Martin Johnson, Davidson, Lawrence Dallaglio, Richard Hill and Tim Rodber (who replaced the desperately unfortunate Eric Miller).

Ian McGeechan was the ring master then, as he is now, but it was a 23 year old, soft spoken Ulster giant that was voted player of the tour by now legendary peers.

The incoming Ulster forwards coach brings us up to the present.

“Rugby has changed. I think there was a lot more physical violence in the game. You could have a wee bit of a ding-dong. Certainly, there were a few incidents in different games, including the Tests, but back then there was a lot more leeway. Rucking was still involved for starters. You weren’t penalised for going off your feet. Basically, you could inflict as much damage to the opposition as possible.”

The sight of Davidson planting a marauding Springbok forward, instantly regaining his feet and repeating the process, all just inches from his own line in the second Test at Newlands, remains vivid.

“At that stage rugby was going through the transition from amateur to professional. Back then it was more old school. There was a different approach and, certainly, Jim Telfer left us in no doubt that we were the underdogs going into the game. That we had to turn up at 110 per cent or we were going to be blown away. In his own special way he certainly got that point across. Every game we went into we were massively motivated and ready for a fight.”

Such words apply to the winning of any rugby match but it sparks comparisons to the current batch and whether they can be as ruthless when faced with the biggest ever breed of Springbok. Colossal specimens like Schalk Burger, Pierre Spies, Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha.

Encouragingly, Davidson believes the 2009 leaders are of a similar ilk to 1997.

“Martin Johnson was not as experienced a captain as Paul O’Connell is now. However, he was helped by the fact there was Lawrence Dallaglio. There was Keith Wood. There were others like Gregor Townsend, Jeremy Guscott; real seasoned internationals. Whenever you have players like that in your team you know you have to step up to the mark and fulfil your role and not shirk any responsibility in the physical confrontation.

“There will be no lack of leadership alongside Paul O’Connell. Brian has already been a Lions captain and winning the Grand Slam means this can be viewed as the icing on the cake. I don’t think he is going to want to miss out on that opportunity.”

Both O’Connell and O’Driscoll are already part of Lions folklore without attaining the status of a Slattery, a McBride or a Davidson. That can only be achieved by repelling the most vicious of onslaughts and winning on the harshest of terrains.