Old-school rugby tours are dying out – we should enjoy this summer while we can

Even if the Home Nations are roundly trounced in the southern hemisphere this summer, these tours will still be historic. Not one of England, Ireland or Wales has won a series in their respective destinations but this summer marks the end of rugby tours as we know them at Test level.

The British and Irish Lions remain sacred – yet scandalously eroded – in rugby’s calendar and next summer the four-nation invitational side will voyage to Australia. But in 2026, the new Nations Championship will kick into gear. Teams will still travel, but there will not be traditional tours as we have grown to know and love; two teams scrapping it out across a Test series alongside, perhaps, the odd midweek fixture.

In the Nations Championship, 12 teams will feature, with the northern hemisphere teams playing each of their southern hemisphere counterparts once, in a sort of round-robin affair, before November’s grand final.

In rugby terms, tours and their tales are almost as old as time. The first Lions tour set sail for Australia and New Zealand in 1888, just 17 years after the formation of the Rugby Football Union. ‘The New Zealand Natives’ arrived on British shores shortly after those maiden Lions had returned and the All Blacks outfit first came to the UK in 1905, marking the first one-nation tour in the history of the sport.

From there, the practice exploded in popularity. Touring became a staple of rugby union – indeed, it involved some of the greatest feats and teams the sport has seen – where the blend of adventurousness, kinship and camaraderie proved to be infectious to players and fans. Not to mention the sporting challenge of travelling to foreign lands as a group of outsiders, taking on the denizens in their own backyard, in front of their own fans. And then drinking all their beer after.

Even in the professional era, the spirit – no pun intended – and essence of a tour lived on. It might have been steadily diluted since the dawn of professionalism, but vestigial examples remain. Take, for instance, Courtney Lawes, on the Love of Rugby podcast, with his anecdote concerning Luke Cowan-Dickie. The England hooker had been so enthusiastic in tucking into the post-match refreshments after England’s series win over Australia in 2022 that the squad had to put him in a wheelchair to get him onto the business-class flight home. One might consider it childish and irresponsible but that is a matter of debate. What is indisputable is that that moment – and the tour itself – will be remembered by the players for the rest of their lives… Cowan-Dickie aside.

Cultural immersion is not as valued as it once was

But tales of touring glory, both on and off the field, will now be a rarity. Presumably, in Lions years, the Home Nations will continue to tour the southern hemisphere, but they will be forced to take the rusty bullets, with their strongest players selected for the invitational excursion. So, Ireland against South Africa, two of the best teams in the world, going head to head across a two-Test series next month? Drink it in. England tilting for a first Test victory in New Zealand for 21 years, with both teams virtually at full strength? Soak it up.

Perhaps, in an increasingly globalised and interconnected world, with technology developing at the pace of Immanuel Feyi-Waboso, cultural immersion is not as valued as it once was. Perhaps, too, with World Cups, Six Nations, European cups, domestic leagues, Club World Cups, Lions tours and Nations Championships, the prestige of winning a two-match Test series against a southern-hemisphere heavyweight might not be what it once was.

Tell that to Ireland’s players, who made history by defeating the All Blacks across three Tests in 2022, described by head coach Andy Farrell as “the toughest thing to do in rugby”. Tell that to England’s heroes of 2003, who ahead of the World Cup decided that the only path to global glory was to lay waste to all and sundry on their three-match tour of New Zealand and Australia. Even Wayne Pivac’s Wales – a squad which had no idea what it wanted to be – fancied by no one, written off by everyone, were able to celebrate a Test victory in South Africa in 2022 as if they had saved Earth from Armageddon.

There was always unbridled joy in watching France’s tours of New Zealand, too, where, invariably, a bunch of Frenchmen who no Kiwi had ever heard of would rock up and score a handful of world-class tries. The visitors might lose every game but they would entertain while doing so and that earned France a peculiar respect and an undefinable fear – admittedly, never spoken of out loud in some sort of omerta – from the New Zealand public which has lasted until the present day.

In terms of the off-field hi-jinks, the adage has always been “what goes on tour stays on tour”. This summer, in many respects, in perpetuity.