Lions must be touring underdogs to survive

THE fate of the 2021 Lions has caused much heated debate this week with the options seemingly ranging from cancel for a year, cancel until 2025 or stage a unique home series in Britain and Ireland of three Test matches and perhaps the already scheduled warm-up game against Japan.

- BRENDAN GALLAGHER

The suits – some of them no particular friends of the Lions who they find as irritating and draining as we find them wonderful and inspiring – will have to make a decision soon but one thing is certain. You tamper with the Lions magic at your peril. In fact you could easily kill them off in one fell swoop.

I long ago adopted a very simple mantra when it comes to the Lions, or to be more precise a famous political quote which I find strangely applicable.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” proclaimed JFK in a famous speech in Houston in 1962 when he vowed America would walk on the moon by the end of the decade.