Lions diary, day twenty-five
Team announcement day yielded a little more interaction than usual with the Lions players – those who were lucky enough to make the cut anyway.
Team announcement day yielded a little more interaction than usual with the Lions players – those who were lucky enough to make the cut anyway.
That interaction was marked by a good deal more humour and on-the-record euphemism than usual as well, as a group of excited players headed for the media scrum with renewed vigour.
Alun-Wyn Jones provided the best quality moments with a collection of one-liners, including “I'd rather sing the Power of Love” when asked if he might consider the re-introduction of the 'Power of Four' anthem that assaulted everyone's ear-drums in 2005.
But that – and any other joke yesterday – was topped by his assessment of Saturday's direct opposition to him, Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha.
“Their second row is obviously among the best in the world at the moment, the sweet and sour of Matfield and Botha… (a brief pause for collected mirth) does what it says on the tin.” Class!
Lee Mears is coming in for a bit of stick for his stature. Having had one journalist describe him as 'three foot one', Gethin Jenkins was asked about the challenge of the multi-national front five and binding together.
“Well, Lee's… shorter than the average hooker, so there's an adjustment to be made there,” was the initial reply.
It is Test weekend, without a doubt. Lions, Lions everywhere when it comes to Durban restaurants: official figures from the local tourist board say that there are over 18,000 visiting fans in town this weekend and bars and restaurants all over town felt it.
A one-hour stroll through two popular areas – Marine Parade by the beachfront and Florida Road in Morningside – revealed that:
Despite its numerous inferiorities as a beer (too much sugar and a slack, malty taste, for openers) Castle is the touring fans' beer of choice. Is that because it tastes like British and Irish rats' water?
Thursday night's most popular song was 'Delilah' – heard in no less than four different establishments – while 'Ireland's Call', 'Wild Rover' and 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot' all were heard going to air twice.
Jamie Heaslip is fast acquiring a reputation for 'old school player of the tour'. Having appeared at the post-match media conference at Durban when the Lions beat the Sharks clutching a half-litre can of Castle as opposed to the usual Lucozade, water or protein drink, he is also a bit of a stranger to the more modern training techniques.
When asked whether he'd been looking at Pierre Spies, who he'll be marking on Saturday, Heaslip looked at his toes for a moment, then answered: “I think I've mentioned before, I don't do analysis!”
The great poisoning of PE appears to have, erm, passed into the waters of history, with a full complement of healthy journalists pitching up at the team announcement.
There are plenty of unrepeatable stories doing the rounds (how happy everyone is to be able to have the 'o' and the 'd' in that word again) but even funnier is that, having been so bitter over the size of the hotel rooms in Durban not one week ago, how grateful we all are suddenly for the functional proximity of the facilities to the bed this time around…
Finally, ten out of ten to the Lions management for their media gatekeeping. Having invited Sky camera crews and reporters onto the training ground an hour before the team announcement, the squad promptly separated into two teams to run a match practice.
Sky's cameras took one look at the teams, figured out the Test team, and delivered a report to air about forty minutes before the announcement itself, earning the reporter in question a hefty reprimand from the Lions management and communications people but stealing Sky quite a coup.
But the reprimand? You show a reporter the exact information you want kept secret, the exact information he wants to publish ahead of everybody else, and then get uppity when he reports the information? Come on…
Journal kept by Richard Anderson