Rugby: Remembering the Lions tour of 1971 - the great awakening of British rugby

It was the year, said the New Zealand captain, Colin Meads, when the Lions stopped believing in fairytales. He was speaking after the drawn final fourth Test at the end of a series his side had lost 2-1 and his words resonated with his opposite number, Willie John McBride, who had had to be persuaded to put his name up for selection after three trips, nine Tests and no victories. “On previous tours we hoped we would win,” said the Irishman. “This time we believed.”

The year was 1971 and then, as this summer, the British & Irish Lions played their first game a few days after touching down. They lost to Queensland after a performance that prompted the state’s coach, Des Connor, to predict they would be the worst team to tour New Zealand. Where Connor saw boys, Meads encountered men. “They had a true team philosophy, unlike other Lions, who were a collection of a few Scots, English, Irish and Welsh. It was the year of the great awakening of British rugby.”

Prising the eyes open was Carwyn James, a philosopher coach for whom rugby was an expression of individual talent, not a sublimation of skill to a game plan. He saw the All Blacks as a machine that, no matter how well oiled, lacked grace and charm. “From the age of six they played the same pattern, rigid and predictable,” he said after the tour. “It produced winning rugby, so why should they change? They love the perspiration but are not all that impressed by the inspiration. They never really understood Barry John. He was a being from another planet.”

James was an unexpected, if inspired, choice to coach the Lions in an age when the management team was two strong: the coach and the manager. James was at that time in charge of Llanelli, the most romantic of the Welsh clubs, and had ruled himself out of contention for Wales by insisting that he alone would select the side, not a panel of five. Wales had nominated the Cardiff coach, Roy Bish, while England and Ireland had put up candidates.

James had the backing of the Scottish tour manager, Doug Smith, but had to persuade a sceptical four home unions’ tours committee. The previous year he had stood at the general election as Plaid Cymru’s candidate in Llanelli, winning 8,500 votes but not the seat. “Is it safe for us to appoint a narrow-minded nationalist?” was one of the questions he was asked in his interview. “Though a nationalist, I am also an internationalist,” was his response. He was not the politically correct choice but he sold his inquisitors his vision of the game and, when he met the squad for the first time, he told them: “Express yourself, not as you would at the office but as you would at home.”

Gerald Davies, the Wales wing who scored three of the 1971 Lions’ six tries, says: “He was a softly spoken lecturer who charmed New Zealand by his style. The prototype coach then was a sergeant-majorish square basher but, rather than impose something, Carwyn would draw it out of you. The best teacher is not one who insists you learn something but one who makes pupils believe they have found the answer, not been given it. He coaxed a performance out of you. He kept the players content and made best use of the intelligence in the squad by involving the likes of Willie John and Ray McLoughlin, who had been on previous tours, on tactics.

“There was a lightness about him. We had one training session when the New Zealand media were among those watching. We went through one move that involved four or five scissors and one of the players told him that we would never be able to do it in a game. ‘I know,’ he replied, pointing to the touchline, ‘but they don’t.’ Before the fourth Test, in which we needed to avoid defeat to become the first Lions team to win a series, never mind in New Zealand, we had our final provincial match at Bay of Plenty. We had won all 19 matches in New Zealand outside the Tests and badly wanted to make it 20 out of 20, but the referee for the game was someone who had refereed one of Wales’s Tests in New Zealand in 1969 and jumped in the air when Fergie McCormick [the All Blacks full-back] dropped a goal.

“Carwyn thought he could sell us down the river and cost us our record so, when he was asked to nominate the referee for the final Test, he said he wanted to see this referee one final time. And so we won that final game and immediately it was over, Carwyn said John Pring, who had taken charge of the first three, would control the final Test; it was a brilliant stroke.”

The 100% provincial record in 1971 has tended to be overlooked because of the achievement of a first Test series success: a 2-2 draw in South Africa in 1955 was the closest the Lions had come. James appreciated the value on a 14-week, 26-match tour of the momentum and confidence generated by a winning run. Then, as this year, the warm-up matches involved the cream of New Zealand rugby. Waikato were third up and expected to provide the Lions with their first upset, but they were blown away. So were Wellington, 47-9, and Otago. A week before the first Test the New Zealand union pitched the tourists against the Ranfurly Shield holders, Canterbury. Anticipating that the opposition would use his team as target practice, he left out Gerald Davies and Barry John.

“I was in the stand watching the most violent game I had ever seen,” says Davies. “We lost our two Test props, Fergus Slattery had his teeth knocked out and the dressing room afterwards was like an accident and emergency unit. We did not have a team doctor then and had to rely on the opposition.” One prop, Sandy Carmichael, suffered a multiple fracture of the cheekbone, and the other, Ray McLoughlin, broke his thumb while defending himself. The referee at one point got the captains together and told them he was going to follow the ball and it was up to them to sort out any trouble.

“That day showed that a Lions tour is about more than the Tests,” says Davies. “To say otherwise could psychologically undermine those who will be involved only in the warm-ups. In 1971 every player contributed fully to the success of the tour. Doug Smith predicted before we flew to New Zealand that we would win the series 2-1 and Carwyn was always confident.

“There was a moment during that Canterbury match when New Zealand realised what they were up against. You can single out a moment in a game where it turns and there it was when the wing John Bevan, whose strength meant he would not be out of place in the game today, ran through their full-back, Fergie McCormick, an iconic figure, and scored a try. We had played some exhilarating rugby on the tour and scored some wonderful tries but they now knew they were tough: no one did that to McCormick.”

On the evening before the first Test in Dunedin James was playing snooker with Barry John. At Canterbury he had sat next to the Welsh fly-half and told him to watch McCormick’s every move. “There would be no time to talk to him in the dressing room and that night I said to Barry that I did not want to see this man playing in any of the other Tests against us,” said James. “And Barry did it for me; he played him out of the game.”

John tortured McCormick with his kicking, pulling him from one side of the pitch to the other even though New Zealand dominated possession. McCormick was so shattered that he missed a penalty from in front of the posts with 20 minutes to go that would have tied the scores 6-6. James got his wish: McCormick was dropped for Laurie Mains, a 15 he did not consider to be an attacking threat and who made the All Blacks even more predictable.

“Barry was so laid back but he was a tough competitor who knew the game tactically,” says Davies. “He destroyed McCormick. Carwyn was such an astute manager of players that he would sometimes excuse Barry from training and let him go off with a football. I had known Barry since we were schoolboys and was not surprised at how he played. He would dictate even when we were under pressure: I did not know what he would do half the time, but neither did the opposition. He flourished in the toughest environment: they went gunning for him but did not touch him.

“When I think of him now I remember another dirty match at Hawke’s Bay when, after they had kicked long again, he picked up the ball and sat on it. As they huffed and puffed, he nonchalantly got up and kicked it out of play. He had so much confidence in himself. It was not arrogance; he just knew what he was capable of.”

John’s try in the third Test set the Lions on their way. They had lost the second 22-12, enjoying more possession but failing to contain the scrum-half Sid Going and the flanker Ian Kirkpatrick. James, whose shrewdness was also reflected in the choice of John Dawes as tour captain, responded by playing the uncapped Welsh forward Derek Quinnell at blindside flanker with orders to stop Going from getting going. And he did. “Carwyn said after the second Test that he was more encouraged about our prospects for the series in defeat than he had been in victory,” says Davies. “The Quinnell selection was typical Carwyn and it worked. Carwyn gave us our heads and trusted us to do the right thing. A player’s talent quite often cannot be explained but some coaches do not trust something unless they can explain it. Carwyn was not like that.”

New Zealand, whose 17-match winning run had ended the previous year when they lost a four-match series in South Africa, went 8-0 up in the final Test but the Lions were level by half-time and took the lead with a JPR Williams drop goal from 45 metres before Mains drew the match with a penalty.

“The reaction when we came back was as if we were the Beatles,” says Davies, who was married two weeks after returning home. “Heathrow was so crowded there was no room to move. It brought home how phenomenal an achievement it was, but I am not sure we would have succeeded without Carwyn as coach. Thanks to him, we were true to our talent.”