The greatest Lions: Gordon Brown

Editor

In a series building up to the 2017 tour to New Zealand, we remember some of the greatest players to ever wear the Lions jersey.

So far we have acknowledged the legacies of Willie John McBrideSir Gareth EdwardsMartin JohnsonSir Ian McGeechanMike GibsonJPR Williams and Jeremy Guscott.

This week it is the turn of a mighty Scot, and we mean that in every sense. A three-time tourist with the Lions in the 1970s – and not to be confused with the British Prime Minister of the same name – Gordon Brown was admired for his character off the field and his incredibly strength on it.

Brown was a 2001 inductee into the World Rugby (then ‘International’) Hall of Fame, the same year that he sadly passed away at the age of 53 after losing his battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

By the modern game’s standards for superhuman locks Brown would not necessarily stand out, measuring up at 196cm and 110kg, but for the time he was a giant.

He also adopted a popular nickname; the Broon frae Troon, or Brown from Troon to those of you not familiar with dialect of west Scotland, Troon being the town where he was born.

Brown’s father was an international goalkeeper, Jock, and that athleticism was passed on to his sons, with Brown’s brother Peter in fact captaining Scotland. Gordon, the taller, would make his international debut in 1969 at the age of 22, in a 6-3 win over South Africa.

A Lions debut wasn’t far away, with Brown one of six Scots selected in 1971 to go to New Zealand for what turned out to be a historial tour.

Left out of the Test side for the first two matches against the All Blacks, Brown got his chance in the third game in Wellington, packing down alongside Willie John McBride in the second row as the Lions won 13-3.

The series still needed to be won, in the fourth Test back in Auckland, and once again with the combination of Brown and McBride the Lions pulled it off, a 14-14 draw ensuring a 2-1 series victory.

Fast forward three years and Brown and McBride were at it again, this time on the ‘Invincibles’ tour of South Africa. Brown was phenomenal, scoring eight tries throughout the tour as the Lions played out 21 wins and one draw.

His legacy is probably defined by that that third Test in Port Elizabeth, although for differing reasons. First of all, it was Brown’s grubber and try that opened the scoring for the Lions at a pivotal moment.

It was as if the bubble had burst for the Springboks,” Ireland’s Dick Milliken recalled years later to The Guardian, as the Lions went on to win emphatically 26-9.

However, in the midst the match forever remembered as the ’99 call’, Brown played a major role in one of the game’s more incredible moments. With a punch, Brown dislodged something rather precious from the Springbok tighthead Johan van Bruyn. His glass eye.

“So there we are, 30 players, plus the ref, on our hands and knees scrabbling about in the mire looking for this glass eye,” Brown recalled.

“Eventually, someone yells ‘Eureka!’ whereupon De Bruyn grabs it and plonks it straight back in the gaping hole in his face. And when he stands up I can’t believe what I’m looking at…. there’s a huge dod of grass sticking out of his eyeball.”

It summed up Brown’s physicality, bringing huge power to the Lions second row and therefore their scrummagging efforts on a tour in 1974 that few beforehand expected them to win. In a fine ending to the story, De Bruyn presented a trophy which included the glass eye to Brown’s widow, Linda, when he travelled to London to attend a banquet in Brown’s honour two weeks before his death.

Brown would tour again with the Lions in 1977 on their return to New Zealand, before hanging up his boots and becoming a much-loved broadcaster, involved in the coverage of the 1991 and 1995 Rugby World Cups.

While his stature and impact on the field are fondly remembered by those who watched him play, it was his fun-loving personality off it that seemingly drew so many people towards him.

Gone all too soon, two great Scottish Lions paid him a glowing tribute; first Sir Ian McGeechan, then Jim Telfer.

“Gordon loved his rugby and he loved having fun. His fellow players, both in Scotland and Lions teams, always regarded him as special.”

“Gordon made an immense contribution to Scottish and British rugby and was very much the cornerstone of our pack in the early Seventies. The world of rugby has lost a giant of a man both in build and sparkling personality.”

by Ben Coles