Wood prepared for a rise in intensity

Gordon's playing days is a photograph of him taken from the Australian leg of the Lions' tour to New Zealand in 1959 with a pint in one hand and a camera hung from his neck. Recently, Keith he found the camera in the refurbished family home in Killaloe and is now using the same camera to take what he calls randomly strange, social snaps on this tour.

"I brought it in to a specialist camera shop in Teddington. They'd all types of everything in there but they'd never seen this before. It was a 1956 Ranger or something, a Japanese camera. So they sent it off to get fixed. I don't actually know what the pictures are like. I've been taking photos but I haven't developed any of the films."

Just before the tour Wood was relaying this story to Noel Murphy, who and the latter said he not only remembered the camera but that particular photograph. From 1959?

"Don't be so stupid," Wood said to him.

"No," said Murphy, "he was wearing my jumper. A white jumper?" inquired Murphy, which indeed it was; Wood having thought it looked like a white, v-neck cricket jumper.

"That was my Cork Con jumper," recalls Murphy. "He took it the whole time."

That's provided one of the few non-rugby, or lighter asides, on what has been a tough tour, and the normally ebullient Wood makes little attempt to hide that fact. But there's some guys you know will plough on regardless in their own single-minded, determined way, and Wood and along with Martin Johnson are definitely two of them.

Furthermore, these would be the two least likely to get carried away with last week's success, especially bearing in mind they, along with Tom Smith and Richard Hill, are the only players to have started in the successful first and second Tests in the series win over South Africa four years ago. Indeed, Wood is something of a lucky Lions totem, and is unbeaten in nine outings for the tourists (touch wood, so to speak).

Despite a raft of questions along the same lines during the week, he refuses to say which might be better, then or now.

"If the situation arises I would have to look at it in the cold light of day, which might be six months from now. I've no interest in making any of those comparisons."

He does think the playing personnel is better, though.

"At the start of the tour it was a better team. I thought it was a better squad, a better group of guys. I thought so at the start and I think so still."

Intensity and harshness of the training regime, dissatisfaction of the midweek team?

"We were told at the start, and I remember talking both to Donal and Robbo at the start, that we would train very hard. And I have to say that I was grumpy that we were training an awful lot because it was bloody hard work."

He doesn't think it was overdone now, although he admits that at one point he thought it might be.

"It has to be a difficult balancing act, but at the end of it, if you get an opportunity to go on a Lions tour you do everything you bloody can. And if you're shattered at the end of it you better make certain you go away on holiday. You better make certain that you talk to your club or your province and make certain they look after you, because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you try and do whatever the hell you can to get in the Test team, to win in the Test team, to win the Test series. You have to do whatever you can."

Wood himself sees this as an end in itself, and has the rather significant distraction of impending marriage to Nicola in August before a projected September return to his club Harlequins. He has another year to run there, but expects to see envisages seeing out his career at the Stoop.

Clearly, though, Matt Dawson's vexed comments touched a nerve and represented the feelings of the discarded dirt-trackers more than ever before on a Lions tour. The Irish captain functioned as a likeable counsellor for some of the Irish contingent, though Wood dismissed notions of a revolt.

"Revolt is too strong a word. Guys were unhappy. What do you expect? There's 37 guys wanting to play in 15 jerseys. Guys won't even be content to be a sub. And that's what you want."

At any rate, the focus for the Test match 22 now can only be on the Colonial Stadium tomorrow and can only be coloured gold. Incredibly, Laughably it was suggested to him that the Wallabies might be in some way irreparably damaged mentally.

"I'd never believe that for a second. I've played Australia on too many occasions. I know exactly how good they are. I know if they get a little purple patch they can do an awful lot of damage. We need to have a sustained level of play above what we had last weekend and we need to hold it for 80 minutes to win.

"Any team that has managed to win everything available to them for the last number of years, you have to give them the respect that they deserve. That doesn't mean that they're superhuman, but you have to be aware of how capable they are, and they are bloody capable."

Wood firmly believes the Lions will need to play better tomorrow, though it's hard to say by how much.

"I actually think we played well, but I think Australia will play significantly better than they did. I don't have any doubt that Australia will be much better and I think it will be a very tough ask of us to get our standard above Australia's standard. But that has to be our target for the weekend."

Even in the elation of victory, Wood admitted: "You still had at the back of your mind that nobody will give a shit about the Gabba if we lose the next two tests."

Well put.