Nine Lions of Leinster would be in my team

MITCHELL, Aston, Wotherspoon, Rotherham, Bromet, Hammond, Mayfield, Surtees, Thompson: on an early September afternoon in 1891, nine Cambridge University rugger types took the field in Cape Town for a set-to with their South African hosts

By comparison, Oxford University’s representation was microscopic. We can only assume their best players were on Bullingdon Club duty, smashing up restaurants and being nasty to poor people.

As ever with tales of the dim and distant – the Lions would not be known as Lions for another 30odd years – we find ourselves in a grey area. Some of the 1891ers had certainly played for Cambridge as students, but they were now turning out for Richmond or Blackheath or London Scottish. Let’s not quibble, though. Nine out of 15 is an eye-catching number in anyone’s language, however hoity-toity.

Indeed, it has never been equalled. Guy’s Hospital (yes, really) fielded a third of the Test team against Australia in Brisbane in 1904; an outstanding Newport side (Lord, how the mighty are fallen) managed five in two games on the 1910 tour of South Africa; and London Welsh contributed that stellar quintet – JPR, Gerald, John Dawes, John Taylor, Merv the Swerve – to the world-changing 1971 victory in New Zealand.

More recently, Leicester achieved something similar, numerically if in no other sense, when Geordan Murphy, Ollie Smith, Graham Rowntree, Martin Corry and Lewis Moody started the widely scorned “warmup Test” against Argentina before heading to All Black country in 2005. But nine? Unmatchable.

Or is it? Ask yourselves this question: if the Lions were playing a Test tomorrow, how many Leinster players would feature in the XV? Just to make it interesting, let’s start with eight and work upwards.