THERE are many miraculous aspects to the 1997 Lions tour of South Africa, not least the domestic strife from which the team was spawned. The 1996-97 season was the first season of professionalism in the British and Irish game, everybody was scrambling to find their feet and chaos reigned. The prospect, therefore, of toppling the reigning World Champions on their own soil seemed remote to some.
The omens weren’t good but one or two factors played out in the Lions’ favour. The Heineken European Cup had hit the ground running and provided an excellent high-quality battle ground in addition to the Five Nations to aid the selection process.
Above all else they had two canny operators and victors from 1974 in charge, namely manager Fran Cotton and coach Ian McGeechan. In addition assistant coach Jim Telfer was on the same hymn sheet and had his own, more painful, experiences of South Africa and was keen to set the record straight.
They picked the right squad for the job with just the one ‘bolter’ in John Bentley, more of which anon. And they made an inspired choice of captain in Martin Johnson even though the Leicester Tiger hadn’t yet captained his country.
Yes, they wanted a big beast of a man to front up their campaign in the land of giant forwards, a player in the mould of Willie John McBride, but as Cotton reveals there was another element to the decision-making process. Martin Johnson’s mum!
“It was Peter Wheeler who originally placed the thought in our minds about Martin, so I started contacting various people to educate myself a bit more on the man. We already knew he was a certain Test starter barring injury
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