Lions pride as much as New Zealanders love hosting the lions, the cold, hard truth is that respect for the combined team is in short supply. To win it back, the lions need to prove they are a force worth taking seriously.
The Lions, in terms of commercial value, sit alongside the All Blacks. They can sell replica shirts. They can attract sponsors with minimal asking and they have tens of thousands of fans willing to follow them all over the world.
The Lions are big business – much loved and much respected. But the perception of them in New Zealand is maybe a little different.
It’s not that the Kiwis don’t love hosting the Lions. This is a nation with a respect for history and tradition, and everyone in New Zealand understands the Lions have a deep footprint in the former and are one of the last great, living relics of the past.
No one in New Zealand is questioning why the Lions exist or why they have so many fierce defenders of their cause. Most New Zealanders feel the same way – they want this team to survive. They want rugby to have a point of difference.
But what New Zealanders also wish is that the Lions were just that bit more credible on the park. The statistics produced by the Lions make cold, sobering reading.
They have had one great mission to New Zealand. That was in 1971 when they played all the rugby. On that tour, they were light years ahead of the All Blacks.
They had all the good ideas. They had all the best players and they embraced a style of football that opened New Zealanders’ eyes to how rugby could be played.
But brilliant though the Lions were on that tour, 1971 stands as an aberration. The rest of the Lions’ squads that have come to New Zealand did little to fire the imagination.
Great tourists for sure – great ambassadors for their respective countries, for the combined entity and for rugby in general – but not great teams.
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