B&I Lions 2017
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@Catogrande trying to pretend his lying and cheap shots is irony is just pathetic.
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A land where rugby is all that matters
May 28 2017, 12:01am,
Don’t be fooled by the lack of noise at Tests — New Zealand is a country defined by success of All BlacksStephen Jones, Rugby Correspondent
New Zealand rugby crowds are a stolid bunch. They don’t make a vast noise, or exude grace. They could never match that explosion of hysteria at Sandy Park last week when Exeter scored the winning try; they’d never be as enraptured as, say, Thomond Park, Limerick, let alone the Principality stadium in Cardiff.
When I sat in Lancaster Park, Christchurch, for my first Lions tour match, back in 1983, I found it eerily quiet. I remember looking around, bemused. I was used to the walls of sound at Europe’s cathedrals of rugby.
The authorities for that Test grasped that the Kiwis lagged behind for noise and support. “So today,” the announcer declared, “we are going to have community singing, just like they do at Cardiff Arms Park and Wimbledon.” I think he may have meant Twickenham but he ploughed on, introducing the opening number. It was: “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts.”
You never forget your first, in any sphere of life. That 1983 tour, an Irish carve-up in terms of selection, was a blessed time of bouncing Fokker Friendship prop aircraft (at least they tended to land quite near the airport), pumpkin soup, motels with unheated bathrooms, Ford Anglias, shut-on-Sundays (plus not-open-that-much-on-other-days-either) shops.
I recall once being stuck in a desperate motel in Dunedin in a winter week of icy rains, weeping as dear adopted England came up on TV from sunny Wimbledon. But what a glorious privilege it all was. The Lions lost 4-0, which rather set a tone
That Lions tour was the first of eight I reported for this paper. The ninth lifts off tomorrow from Heathrow. Only my friend David Rogers, the photographer, will have followed more in their entirety than me — his first was 1980 in South Africa. No player or coach can match us, and if any fan has done more from start to finish, then good luck to you. No doubt you are 20 years younger than you look. Like David and I.
The place puts your affection for rugby under a baleful microscope. Everybody should go once just to sample it, to see if their own love of rugby really can last the force-feeding diet served up. By the third night on tour, you are already wishing that the waitress would just take the order without delivering the technical analysis of the Kiwi lineout.
Wales may be passionate about rugby but I would detest it if rugby was a blind obsession. In 2007 when New Zealand were ejected from the World Cup, I read a report that industrial productivity fell sharply there. For God’s sake, rugby is not an activity profound enough to define a country.
But New Zealand as New Zealand? Sheer, lung-filling beauty, wonderfully friendly people, blissful coasts and peaks and contrasts, a satisfying pace of life — all good as long as you don’t mention a certain sport, the dreadful haka or that Richie McCaw was always offside. What about their affection for the old country? They have just voted to keep the Union Flag on their own flag, so still the sun never sets on the, erm, empire.
Sadly for the players, touring any major rugby nation is now arid, the traditional mix of crusading, japes, cultural visits, and invitation all largely in abeyance. If the 2017 tour split as did the 1968 tour to South Africa into Kippers (went to bed) and Wreckers (dismantled the hotel, the train or wherever they were meant to sleep) it would be cancelled inside a week, instead of entering legend.
It is sad to think in a place such as New Zealand that the 41 Lions players could actually be anywhere for all the contact they will have with the host nation and its beauty. On the day after that 1983 Test, we drove over Arthur’s Pass through breathtaking scenery, waterfalls, z-bends, along roads which back then were unguarded at the edge of the precipice. Sheer beauty.
When we got to Greymouth, the next venue, we found a one-horse, one- hotel town, but such warmth. At that time, to touch the hem of a Lion was something that might happen to you once in your lifetime. Everybody gathered in one rugby gang after the match, the 12,000 miles shrunk to a few inches. When was the last time Barcelona went 12,000 miles and played in a tiny town?
Even by the 1993 tour to New Zealand, that crusading and wayfaring element had diminished. By 2005, relations between host and hosted were strained. There was even booing of the Lions.
This time? There will be a £100m-plus boost for the host economy. But let’s hope and pray that the tangibles and intangibles amount to way more than that.
By the way, I’m still waiting for any Kiwi to grasp irony. I am thinking of taking a red flashing light to wear on my head when being ironic, to help them.
But now, the emotion I feel about Lions tours is no longer that old joy and sense of wonder, no longer just the beautiful rhythm of a tour as it glides through South Africa, Australia or New Zealand. It is bitter frustration and blazing anger.
However good New Zealand teams have been (often, very good to superb) the chief opponents of the Lions have always been in British and Irish rugby. Gradually, inexorably and disgracefully, the rest of the sport — the national unions at home, the outdated administration and committee of the Lions in their Dublin headquarters, the organisers of every major club competition in Europe, especially the Aviva Premiership and Guinness Pro12 — are strangling our greatest team and concept.
The preparation time allotted for these Lions, or should I say the scandalous lack of it, the refusal of all the above bodies to give them two weeks’ rest and two weeks to prepare before leaving, not only cripples the team, but has become more dangerous, debilitating and threatening to careers.
Player welfare, you see, is always somebody else’s problem. We’ve knackered them, you save them. The Lions arrive on Wednesday, and play Saturday. Disgusting.
What we have is a heavyweight battle between two massive punchers — the champion is free to box as he wishes; the challenger is forced to fight with both arms tied behind his back. The Lion magic still exists, but almost as an abstract.
All aboard. To the tens of thousands planning to follow, have a magnificent tour. I still love the Lions more than World Cups, way more than the torrent of international matches. I am unstinting in my admiration of the likes of Sir Ian McGeechan and Warren Gatland and Graham Henry, who have performed wonders despite those tied hands.
New Zealand is a lovely place to visit, but if you cannot prepare an elite team any better than the worst pub side, then it is no place to go.
@Pot-Hale said in B&I Lions 2017:
A land where rugby is all that matters
May 28 2017, 12:01am,
Don’t be fooled by the lack of noise at Tests — New Zealand is a country defined by success of All BlacksDon't think it is anymore. Yeah, sure we like our rugby team winning, but there is more to NZ than just rugby these days.
Stephen Jones, Rugby Correspondent
New Zealand rugby crowds are a stolid bunch. They don’t make a vast noise, or exude grace. They could never match that explosion of hysteria at Sandy Park last week when Exeter scored the winning try; they’d never be as enraptured as, say, Thomond Park, Limerick, let alone the Principality stadium in Cardiff.
This is true. Crowds tend to be fairly quiet in NZ. I'm not even going to try and refute this.
When I sat in Lancaster Park, Christchurch, for my first Lions tour match, back in 1983, I found it eerily quiet. I remember looking around, bemused. I was used to the walls of sound at Europe’s cathedrals of rugby.
The authorities for that Test grasped that the Kiwis lagged behind for noise and support. “So today,” the announcer declared, “we are going to have community singing, just like they do at Cardiff Arms Park and Wimbledon.” I think he may have meant Twickenham but he ploughed on, introducing the opening number. It was: “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts.”
You never forget your first, in any sphere of life. That 1983 tour, an Irish carve-up in terms of selection, was a blessed time of bouncing Fokker Friendship prop aircraft (at least they tended to land quite near the airport), pumpkin soup, motels with unheated bathrooms, Ford Anglias, shut-on-Sundays (plus not-open-that-much-on-other-days-either) shops.
I imagine this was true. I was too young in 1983, but it sounds about right.
I recall once being stuck in a desperate motel in Dunedin in a winter week of icy rains, weeping as dear adopted England came up on TV from sunny Wimbledon. But what a glorious privilege it all was. The Lions lost 4-0, which rather set a tone
I always wonder (any English fans care to comment please), do England see Jones as "dear adopted Welshman"? The Irish can't stand Jones, for much the same reasons as Kiwis (patronising, belittling, pompous etc).
That Lions tour was the first of eight I reported for this paper. The ninth lifts off tomorrow from Heathrow. Only my friend David Rogers, the photographer, will have followed more in their entirety than me — his first was 1980 in South Africa. No player or coach can match us, and if any fan has done more from start to finish, then good luck to you. No doubt you are 20 years younger than you look. Like David and I.
These 2 need to find a hotel room, such is the love-in.
The place puts your affection for rugby under a baleful microscope. Everybody should go once just to sample it, to see if their own love of rugby really can last the force-feeding diet served up. By the third night on tour, you are already wishing that the waitress would just take the order without delivering the technical analysis of the Kiwi lineout.
Cliché alert?
Wales may be passionate about rugby but I would detest it if rugby was a blind obsession. In 2007 when New Zealand were ejected from the World Cup, I read a report that industrial productivity fell sharply there. For God’s sake, rugby is not an activity profound enough to define a country.
Fact or fiction?
But New Zealand as New Zealand? Sheer, lung-filling beauty, wonderfully friendly people, blissful coasts and peaks and contrasts, a satisfying pace of life — all good as long as you don’t mention a certain sport, the dreadful haka or that Richie McCaw was always offside. What about their affection for the old country? They have just voted to keep the Union Flag on their own flag, so still the sun never sets on the, erm, empire.
Just needs a comment about PI poaching to complete the bingo...
Sadly for the players, touring any major rugby nation is now arid, the traditional mix of crusading, japes, cultural visits, and invitation all largely in abeyance. If the 2017 tour split as did the 1968 tour to South Africa into Kippers (went to bed) and Wreckers (dismantled the hotel, the train or wherever they were meant to sleep) it would be cancelled inside a week, instead of entering legend.
And Jones was the heart and soul of the party no doubt, a player's journalist...
It is sad to think in a place such as New Zealand that the 41 Lions players could actually be anywhere for all the contact they will have with the host nation and its beauty. On the day after that 1983 Test, we drove over Arthur’s Pass through breathtaking scenery, waterfalls, z-bends, along roads which back then were unguarded at the edge of the precipice. Sheer beauty.
When we got to Greymouth, the next venue, we found a one-horse, one- hotel town, but such warmth. At that time, to touch the hem of a Lion was something that might happen to you once in your lifetime. Everybody gathered in one rugby gang after the match, the 12,000 miles shrunk to a few inches. When was the last time Barcelona went 12,000 miles and played in a tiny town?
Even by the 1993 tour to New Zealand, that crusading and wayfaring element had diminished. By 2005, relations between host and hosted were strained. There was even booing of the Lions.
That was entirely the fault of Woodward and his PR "manager". Just mix with the locals, instead of all the ridiculous malarkey of 2005.
This time? There will be a £100m-plus boost for the host economy. But let’s hope and pray that the tangibles and intangibles amount to way more than that.
By the way, I’m still waiting for any Kiwi to grasp irony. I am thinking of taking a red flashing light to wear on my head when being ironic, to help them.
We get irony. But you don't do irony Stephen. You do attempted upper crust British look-down-at-the-colonials style pieces.
But now, the emotion I feel about Lions tours is no longer that old joy and sense of wonder, no longer just the beautiful rhythm of a tour as it glides through South Africa, Australia or New Zealand. It is bitter frustration and blazing anger.
However good New Zealand teams have been (often, very good to superb) the chief opponents of the Lions have always been in British and Irish rugby. Gradually, inexorably and disgracefully, the rest of the sport — the national unions at home, the outdated administration and committee of the Lions in their Dublin headquarters, the organisers of every major club competition in Europe, especially the Aviva Premiership and Guinness Pro12 — are strangling our greatest team and concept.
The preparation time allotted for these Lions, or should I say the scandalous lack of it, the refusal of all the above bodies to give them two weeks’ rest and two weeks to prepare before leaving, not only cripples the team, but has become more dangerous, debilitating and threatening to careers.
Player welfare, you see, is always somebody else’s problem. We’ve knackered them, you save them. The Lions arrive on Wednesday, and play Saturday. Disgusting.
What we have is a heavyweight battle between two massive punchers — the champion is free to box as he wishes; the challenger is forced to fight with both arms tied behind his back. The Lion magic still exists, but almost as an abstract.
All aboard. To the tens of thousands planning to follow, have a magnificent tour. I still love the Lions more than World Cups, way more than the torrent of international matches. I am unstinting in my admiration of the likes of Sir Ian McGeechan and Warren Gatland and Graham Henry, who have performed wonders despite those tied hands.
New Zealand is a lovely place to visit, but if you cannot prepare an elite team any better than the worst pub side, then it is no place to go.
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Seriously lads. It's Stephen Jones. You don't need to devote this much energy every time he pens an article mentioning New Zealand.
It's really not worth it.
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https://www.sportsjoe.ie/rugby/serious-questions-need-asked-cj-stander-worrying-sight-124774
Watching him against Scarlets, he was nowhere near the bullocking form he had in Chicago.
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https://www.sportsjoe.ie/rugby/serious-questions-need-asked-cj-stander-worrying-sight-124774
Watching him against Scarlets, he was nowhere near the bullocking form he had in Chicago.
Agreed. Although Munster were a shambles at Lansdowne yesterday - beaten offthe park like an academy team.
If the PRO12 playoffs were anything to go by in terms of Lions, I'd say Gatland is wishing he could change his squad.
Test contention - Best, McGrath, Furlong, Henshaw, Murray bench
Poor and shouldn't be getting on the plane - O'Mahony, Sexton.
Midweek side - O'Brien, Henderson, Stander, Payne. -
Isn't playing "ive got a lovely bunch of coconuts", because you know you're crap at sing, irony?
Talk about being whooshed.
Whooshed in his first visit, been getting whooshed since.
Who and where are these waitresses and shop assistants that keep wanting to talk rugby? I come on here because it seems to me barely anyone in NZ wants to talk rugby. Maybe they're being polite and trying to take an interest in a visitors work?
NZ is the least national sport obsessed place I can think of. Having lived in London, Melbourne, Sydney where 3 different codes hold prime place - NZ is about 10% of the level of those places. The difference being none of those places had a national team in those codes holding a primary place, with the occasional exception of England every 2 years.
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@Pot-Hale said in B&I Lions 2017:
A land where rugby is all that matters
May 28 2017, 12:01am,
Don’t be fooled by the lack of noise at Tests — New Zealand is a country defined by success of All BlacksDon't think it is anymore. Yeah, sure we like our rugby team winning, but there is more to NZ than just rugby these days.
Stephen Jones, Rugby Correspondent
New Zealand rugby crowds are a stolid bunch. They don’t make a vast noise, or exude grace. They could never match that explosion of hysteria at Sandy Park last week when Exeter scored the winning try; they’d never be as enraptured as, say, Thomond Park, Limerick, let alone the Principality stadium in Cardiff.
This is true. Crowds tend to be fairly quiet in NZ. I'm not even going to try and refute this.
When I sat in Lancaster Park, Christchurch, for my first Lions tour match, back in 1983, I found it eerily quiet. I remember looking around, bemused. I was used to the walls of sound at Europe’s cathedrals of rugby.
The authorities for that Test grasped that the Kiwis lagged behind for noise and support. “So today,” the announcer declared, “we are going to have community singing, just like they do at Cardiff Arms Park and Wimbledon.” I think he may have meant Twickenham but he ploughed on, introducing the opening number. It was: “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts.”
You never forget your first, in any sphere of life. That 1983 tour, an Irish carve-up in terms of selection, was a blessed time of bouncing Fokker Friendship prop aircraft (at least they tended to land quite near the airport), pumpkin soup, motels with unheated bathrooms, Ford Anglias, shut-on-Sundays (plus not-open-that-much-on-other-days-either) shops.
I imagine this was true. I was too young in 1983, but it sounds about right.
I recall once being stuck in a desperate motel in Dunedin in a winter week of icy rains, weeping as dear adopted England came up on TV from sunny Wimbledon. But what a glorious privilege it all was. The Lions lost 4-0, which rather set a tone
I always wonder (any English fans care to comment please), do England see Jones as "dear adopted Welshman"? The Irish can't stand Jones, for much the same reasons as Kiwis (patronising, belittling, pompous etc).
That Lions tour was the first of eight I reported for this paper. The ninth lifts off tomorrow from Heathrow. Only my friend David Rogers, the photographer, will have followed more in their entirety than me — his first was 1980 in South Africa. No player or coach can match us, and if any fan has done more from start to finish, then good luck to you. No doubt you are 20 years younger than you look. Like David and I.
These 2 need to find a hotel room, such is the love-in.
The place puts your affection for rugby under a baleful microscope. Everybody should go once just to sample it, to see if their own love of rugby really can last the force-feeding diet served up. By the third night on tour, you are already wishing that the waitress would just take the order without delivering the technical analysis of the Kiwi lineout.
Cliché alert?
Wales may be passionate about rugby but I would detest it if rugby was a blind obsession. In 2007 when New Zealand were ejected from the World Cup, I read a report that industrial productivity fell sharply there. For God’s sake, rugby is not an activity profound enough to define a country.
Fact or fiction?
But New Zealand as New Zealand? Sheer, lung-filling beauty, wonderfully friendly people, blissful coasts and peaks and contrasts, a satisfying pace of life — all good as long as you don’t mention a certain sport, the dreadful haka or that Richie McCaw was always offside. What about their affection for the old country? They have just voted to keep the Union Flag on their own flag, so still the sun never sets on the, erm, empire.
Just needs a comment about PI poaching to complete the bingo...
Sadly for the players, touring any major rugby nation is now arid, the traditional mix of crusading, japes, cultural visits, and invitation all largely in abeyance. If the 2017 tour split as did the 1968 tour to South Africa into Kippers (went to bed) and Wreckers (dismantled the hotel, the train or wherever they were meant to sleep) it would be cancelled inside a week, instead of entering legend.
And Jones was the heart and soul of the party no doubt, a player's journalist...
It is sad to think in a place such as New Zealand that the 41 Lions players could actually be anywhere for all the contact they will have with the host nation and its beauty. On the day after that 1983 Test, we drove over Arthur’s Pass through breathtaking scenery, waterfalls, z-bends, along roads which back then were unguarded at the edge of the precipice. Sheer beauty.
When we got to Greymouth, the next venue, we found a one-horse, one- hotel town, but such warmth. At that time, to touch the hem of a Lion was something that might happen to you once in your lifetime. Everybody gathered in one rugby gang after the match, the 12,000 miles shrunk to a few inches. When was the last time Barcelona went 12,000 miles and played in a tiny town?
Even by the 1993 tour to New Zealand, that crusading and wayfaring element had diminished. By 2005, relations between host and hosted were strained. There was even booing of the Lions.
That was entirely the fault of Woodward and his PR "manager". Just mix with the locals, instead of all the ridiculous malarkey of 2005.
This time? There will be a £100m-plus boost for the host economy. But let’s hope and pray that the tangibles and intangibles amount to way more than that.
By the way, I’m still waiting for any Kiwi to grasp irony. I am thinking of taking a red flashing light to wear on my head when being ironic, to help them.
We get irony. But you don't do irony Stephen. You do attempted upper crust British look-down-at-the-colonials style pieces.
But now, the emotion I feel about Lions tours is no longer that old joy and sense of wonder, no longer just the beautiful rhythm of a tour as it glides through South Africa, Australia or New Zealand. It is bitter frustration and blazing anger.
However good New Zealand teams have been (often, very good to superb) the chief opponents of the Lions have always been in British and Irish rugby. Gradually, inexorably and disgracefully, the rest of the sport — the national unions at home, the outdated administration and committee of the Lions in their Dublin headquarters, the organisers of every major club competition in Europe, especially the Aviva Premiership and Guinness Pro12 — are strangling our greatest team and concept.
The preparation time allotted for these Lions, or should I say the scandalous lack of it, the refusal of all the above bodies to give them two weeks’ rest and two weeks to prepare before leaving, not only cripples the team, but has become more dangerous, debilitating and threatening to careers.
Player welfare, you see, is always somebody else’s problem. We’ve knackered them, you save them. The Lions arrive on Wednesday, and play Saturday. Disgusting.
What we have is a heavyweight battle between two massive punchers — the champion is free to box as he wishes; the challenger is forced to fight with both arms tied behind his back. The Lion magic still exists, but almost as an abstract.
All aboard. To the tens of thousands planning to follow, have a magnificent tour. I still love the Lions more than World Cups, way more than the torrent of international matches. I am unstinting in my admiration of the likes of Sir Ian McGeechan and Warren Gatland and Graham Henry, who have performed wonders despite those tied hands.
New Zealand is a lovely place to visit, but if you cannot prepare an elite team any better than the worst pub side, then it is no place to go.
@Billy-Tell said in B&I Lions 2017:
I always wonder (any English fans care to comment please), do England see Jones as "dear adopted Welshman"? The Irish can't stand Jones, for much the same reasons as Kiwis (patronising, belittling, pompous etc).
In general we do not see him as a dear adopted Welshman. Mostly we think he's a complete dick and pay a lot less attention to him than you guys seem to. Most of my Taff mates also think he's a dick and are probably glad that he's seen by many as a Pom.
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@Nepia said in B&I Lions 2017:
How is it 13 hours since that post and Pot Hale hasn't been banned!
It was a good first cast into the pond leading up to the tour, got a few nudging the bait and a good solid strike. @Bones effort was better though, very subtle.
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Isn't playing "ive got a lovely bunch of coconuts", because you know you're crap at sing, irony?
Talk about being whooshed.
Whooshed in his first visit, been getting whooshed since.
Who and where are these waitresses and shop assistants that keep wanting to talk rugby? I come on here because it seems to me barely anyone in NZ wants to talk rugby. Maybe they're being polite and trying to take an interest in a visitors work?
NZ is the least national sport obsessed place I can think of. Having lived in London, Melbourne, Sydney where 3 different codes hold prime place - NZ is about 10% of the level of those places. The difference being none of those places had a national team in those codes holding a primary place, with the occasional exception of England every 2 years.
@Rapido said in B&I Lions 2017:
Isn't playing "ive got a lovely bunch of coconuts", because you know you're crap at sing, irony?
No, I don't think that is irony. If they'd put on accidentally "I'd like to teach the world to sing", that would be somewhat ironic and funny, if they were actually crap at singing.
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@Nepia said in B&I Lions 2017:
How is it 13 hours since that post and Pot Hale hasn't been banned!
It was a good first cast into the pond leading up to the tour, got a few nudging the bait and a good solid strike. @Bones effort was better though, very subtle.
@jegga said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Nepia said in B&I Lions 2017:
How is it 13 hours since that post and Pot Hale hasn't been banned!
It was a good first cast into the pond leading up to the tour, got a few nudging the bait and a good solid strike. @Bones effort was better though, very subtle.
Note to self: Jegga's a tough bugger of a marker.
Further note to self: Must try harder.
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@jegga said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Nepia said in B&I Lions 2017:
How is it 13 hours since that post and Pot Hale hasn't been banned!
It was a good first cast into the pond leading up to the tour, got a few nudging the bait and a good solid strike. @Bones effort was better though, very subtle.
Note to self: Jegga's a tough bugger of a marker.
Further note to self: Must try harder.
@Pot-Hale said in B&I Lions 2017:
@jegga said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Nepia said in B&I Lions 2017:
How is it 13 hours since that post and Pot Hale hasn't been banned!
It was a good first cast into the pond leading up to the tour, got a few nudging the bait and a good solid strike. @Bones effort was better though, very subtle.
Note to self: Jegga's a tough bugger of a marker.
Further note to self: Must try harder.
Pace yourself mate, you don't want to peak early.
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@jegga said in B&I Lions 2017:
Talking of trolling
Definite irony there. These Australian and Welsh fellas masquerading as England spokesmen do love to talk from the sidelines.
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@Rapido said in B&I Lions 2017:
Isn't playing "ive got a lovely bunch of coconuts", because you know you're crap at sing, irony?
No, I don't think that is irony. If they'd put on accidentally "I'd like to teach the world to sing", that would be somewhat ironic and funny, if they were actually crap at singing.
@Pot-Hale said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Rapido said in B&I Lions 2017:
Isn't playing "ive got a lovely bunch of coconuts", because you know you're crap at sing, irony?
No, I don't think that is irony. If they'd put on accidentally "I'd like to teach the world to sing", that would be somewhat ironic and funny, if they were actually crap at singing.
Darn, so the walrus is right.
A. he hasn't met me
B. I don't get irony anywayBut it is ironic that in 1983 we didn't have many ......
No, won't go there -
“That is not for me to decide, I’m easy. It’s where I’ve played the majority of my rugby, but I’ve played a lot at 12 as well. It depends what other people see me as, it’s not about what I think."
Guess who?
Owen Farrell -
“That is not for me to decide, I’m easy. It’s where I’ve played the majority of my rugby, but I’ve played a lot at 12 as well. It depends what other people see me as, it’s not about what I think."
Guess who?
Owen Farrell -
@Pot-Hale
