In a short news story published on February 12, 1950, The Times reported that “a notable change” had been made to the colours for the forthcoming British Isles tour to New Zealand and Australia, the first since the war and the last that any team would embark upon by boat.
Instead of dark blue jerseys, white shorts and red stockings, as in the South Africa tour in 1938, and that in New Zealand in 1930, the colours will be reversed. That is to say the jerseys will be red, the shorts white and the stockings dark blue. This change will meet the wishes of New Zealand who, very understandably, had no desire to shed their famous All Black jersey.
The 1950 squad, captained by Karl Mullen, were away for six months. They played 30 fixtures, including a stop in Colombo on the way home for a match against Ceylon, and were heralded for their attractive rugby.
They became the first of the red Lions.
Nobody could have foreseen where the Lions would be 75 years later, a commercial beast trading on the romantic feats of 1971, 1974 and 1997 — rugby from another time — and thriving against the odds in the professional era.
This tour to Australia is six weeks rather than six months, but about 40,000 supporters are expected to head down under for the three-Test series against the Wallabies. All of them will be wearing replicas of the famous red jersey.
We have traced the history of this most unique sporting team since 1950 through the voices of the players and the pages of The Times and Sunday Times. Accompanying this article is a three-part podcast series, The Red Lions.
Between Bryn Meredith and Finn Russell, each player interviewed toured with the Lions before and after them in a golden chain connecting 20 tours: Meredith, Willie John McBride, Andy Irvine, John Beattie, Donal Lenihan, Ieuan Evans, Matt Dawson, Martyn Williams, Adam Jones, Sam Warburton, Dan Biggar and Russell.
They tell a rollocking tale of glory, despair and the Lions’ seemingly eternal quest for relevance. They tell stories of politics, punch-ups and the pressures of professionalism that began as early as 1983.
What also emerges is just why this anachronistic team of four nations matters so much. Fewer than 900 players have represented the Lions since 1888.
Part one: From adventurers to ‘Invincibles’ (1950-1974)
Only one journalist travelled to cover the 1950 Lions tour. DR Gent, a former teacher who won five caps for England, was there for The Sunday Times. He entertained the squad with poetry recitals, but he grew homesick and left after five weeks.
Nevertheless, there was enough coverage to learn that the British Isles team, as they were officially known, left quite an impression in New Zealand, even if they did lose the Test series 3-0.
In 50 years, New Zealand has seen no more successful sporting tour than that which the British Isles Rugby team has just completed. This is true even though they lost the Test matches. The success is proved by the fact that in the later Tests thousands of New Zealanders, fervent rugby nationalists, were eager to see the visitors win. They were early given the name of “Lions” (from the lion badge they wore) and by the end of the tour they were “Rugby Lions”.
August 17, 1950, The Times
The oldest living Lion, Mick Lane, is now 99. He was there in 1950. Five years later the Lions toured South Africa with Cliff Morgan at fly half and had the same commitment to playing fast, attacking rugby.
“There was only one Cliff Morgan,” Meredith says. “He was quite brilliant. He played in a startling manner, really.” The Lions drew the series 2-2, but won the hearts of the people with their dashing rugby. The first Test in Johannesburg, won by the Lions, attracted 100,000 people.
The flight to and from South Africa took 36 hours and stopped six times. For Meredith, a 24-year-old who had never been further than Barry Island, the rugby was almost secondary to the adventure.
“It’s beyond your wildest dreams that you’re going to do a tour for three months, away from your normal work,” he says. “We went down diamond mines, gold mines. We saw the wild animals of South Africa. You saw things that nobody else could, unless you were a Lion.”
However, Meredith almost didn’t make it to South Africa. He was teaching at St Albans Grammar School and his request for leave was initially blocked on the grounds that to play against South Africa was to demonstrate support for the apartheid regime; a recurring theme of Lions tours through to the 1980s.
“There would be no black players playing for South Africa,” Meredith says. “That was the reason the education authorities said no. It would look to the world like we would be supporting apartheid.”
The Lions of 1959 went down 3-1 in New Zealand and the pattern of defeats continued. They would not win another Test against the Springboks or the All Blacks for 12 years. They did taste success against Australia in the 1960s, but the Wallabies were not considered good enough at the time to warrant a full tour.
Meredith, on his third tour in 1962, roomed with a young lock from Ulster. “He was a great favourite of mine,” Willie John McBride says. “He always gave me credit. He said one day, ‘When McBride is behind me in the scrum, I know he is there.’ It is things like that that spurred me on.”
McBride would become the greatest Lion of all, playing 70 games and 17 Tests. But by the end of the decade his best Test result from three tours was a draw against South Africa in 1968. “We were never going to beat New Zealand or South Africa in those early days,” he says. “New Zealand had this ‘win-at-all-costs’ attitude and that opens a lot of doors. Players were injured who should not have been injured. That was something we had never experienced before.”
McBride had been ready to make himself unavailable for the 1971 tour to New Zealand to focus on his career as a bank manager in Ballymena. That was until Carwyn James, the great Welsh coach, invited him to lunch in Cardiff.
“Carywn smoked cigarettes,” McBride recalls. “He took a big long draw on this cigarette. He blew the smoke out and said, ‘This tour is going to be different.’ Then he said something that really knocked me over. ‘Willie John,’ he says. ‘I need you.’ ”
And it was different. The Lions were blessed with a magical set of backs in 1971: Gareth Edwards, Barry John, Mike Gibson and David Duckham. Plus McBride had talked to James about the kind of forwards they would need to stand up to the All Blacks.
“A lot more thought was put into selection. We began to get this feeling that we would not be second best,” McBride says.
Having won the 1971 series 2-1, there was never any question that McBride would go on his fifth Lions tour in 1974. “I knew I was in line for captaincy and I thought, ‘We owe South Africa one. I owe South Africa one.’ ”
The Lions won the first 21 games of the tour before drawing the fourth and final Test. The “Invincibles” played some supreme attacking rugby, underpinned by a determination from McBride that his team would not be bullied.
That mindset led to the infamous “99” call, which was McBride’s signal for every player to belt the opponent nearest to him on the basis that they could not all be sent off. The idea had stemmed from a warning McBride received on the eve of a game in east London, shortly before the third Test.
“We had experienced one or two nasty things. I got this call that said, ‘There are two guys on this team who will not be good for your health.’ I put the phone down and thought, ‘We’ll be ready this time,’ ” he says. “We had a team meeting and I said, ‘We will not accept this and we will not run away from it. We will confront it.’ ”
The third Test — the Battle of Boet Erasmus — was scarred by outbreaks of violence. It also provided a curiously heart-warming tale after Gordon Brown punched Johan de Bruyn at a lineout, dislodging the Springbok lock’s glass eye.
Andy Irvine tells the story. “They couldn’t find it. So they were all looking on the grass. Gordon found it and said, ‘Johan, is this yours?’
“He said, ‘Yes, thank you, Gordon,’ and he stuck it back in. As they lined up to take the lineout, Gordon said, ‘Stop, stop. Johan, you’ve got a bit of grass sticking out of your eye.’
“Gordon passed away [of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2001] when he was only 53. Just before we had a major dinner for him to raise funds for his charity. Johan de Bruyn came across for that. He went up on stage with a small rugby ball — and mounted on the ball was his glass eye. He presented that to Gordon on stage.”
The violence was barely mentioned in the Sunday Times match report, which focused on the glorious achievement of the Lions going 3-0 up in a four-Test series.
All the angels and the archangels and their trumpeters could not do justice to this. Whatever Hillary felt when he planted his flag on the peak of Everest must surely have been mirrored in the mind of Willie John McBride, captain supreme, when his team-mates hoisted him aloft on their shoulders at the end of this pulsating match.
July 14, 1974, The Sunday Times
As McBride left the stadium, he said he could die happy. “I had experienced all the defeats and all the failures. I had experienced 1971 and we had finished the job in South Africa,” he says.
Part two: Politics, punch-ups and talk of professionalism (1980-1997)
The Lions would struggle to emulate the glorious feats of 1974. The weather in New Zealand ground them down in 1977. Peter Wheeler, the England hooker, sent home a postcard which read: “It’s only rained twice this week. Once for four days, and then for three.”
Their clothes would never dry. The famous picture of Fran Cotton caked in mud was taken in a game against the Junior All Blacks in Wellington. The heavy grounds stymied the Lions’ great attacking players such as Phil Bennett and JJ Williams.
The 1980 tour to South Africa took place against the wishes of the British government. Players were asked not to travel. The Lions committee met and decided the tour would go ahead.
“In my heart, I knew it was wrong,” John Beattie says. “It troubled me a lot. I remember getting letters from lots of politicians before I left saying we shouldn’t go. I regret it. I remember being absolutely gobsmacked that there were bus stops for white people and black people, that we were supported by the black people.”
In April 1980 the International Rugby Board rejected a southern hemisphere proposal for the introduction of a World Cup. In a familiar theme, certain factions within rugby were determined to modernise while others put the brakes on.
That decision led directly to conversations among Lions on the 1983 tour about whether to sign up for a breakaway professional rugby circuit being proposed by David Lord, an Australian sports entrepreneur and broadcaster.
“We were called into a room to discuss whether we would have an interest in going professional,” Donal Lenihan says. “Eddie Butler made the point that: ‘Playing for Wales and captaining Wales means more to me.’ That was the first time that professionalism was mooted.”
Lord’s venture never got off the ground. More than 40 years on, players on this Lions tour will be having exactly the same conversations about the new rebel league R360, for which a number have signed provisional contracts.
There was no tour to South Africa in 1986. The Lions instead arranged a one-off game against a star-studded Rest of the World XV, who won 15-7 in Cardiff. Colin Deans, the Lions captain, and a group of senior players campaigned successfully for the game to be considered a Test. “We were the 1986 Lions,” Lenihan says.
This was a dark period for the Lions. Meredith had reflected on his time with the team with great joy. It was the people and the experiences that mattered most to him. “That’s the lovely thing about rugby, really. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t win. What bloody difference does it make? It’s only a game,” he says.
Beattie, who also toured in 1983 and played in the 1986 game, feels very differently about his experience. “I look back on my tours with unbelievable sadness,” he says. “When the 1974 guys came back, the press were there and it’s heroes [were] coming home. When we came back, nobody. It’s really tough. To go and do this 12-week, and then ten-week tour, playing rugby, making millions for somebody else, losing. I can’t over-stress how horrible it was.”
With South Africa out of the equation in 1989, the Lions arranged their first full-blown tour to Australia in 90 years. With it came familiar concerns about whether Australian rugby was strong enough to sustain even a contracted 12-game schedule.
A run of dismal tours and the pressure being exerted on rugby union players to switch codes had made the series a make-or-break venture for the Lions. Six months earlier, Jonathan Davies, the likely Lions fly half, had joined Widnes rugby league club. Next on the radar was a young English centre.
“Rugby was under pressure and the debate about professionalism had started,” Lenihan says.
“Jerry Guscott and I were rooming somewhere in Australia. He was out of the room and the phone rang. This fella said, ‘Hello, is Jerry Guscott there?’
“I said, ‘No, who’s calling?’
“He said, ‘Ellery Hanley.’
“Jerry came back into the room and I said, ‘Your fella Ellery Hanley was looking for you.’
“And Jerry was like, ‘Piss off.’ I says, ‘I am telling you, Ellery Hanley rang.’
“A couple of days later the phone rings again. Jerry answers it then puts his hand over the receiver and whispers to me: ‘Ellery Hanley.’
“I said, ‘I f***in told yer!’ ”
If the tour had failed, then the Lions could well have died in the country where they first toured. The whole thing was teetering on the brink when the Lions lost the first Test. Next up was the ACT in Canberra, now known as the Brumbies. Lenihan was captain of the midweek team. They had built an identity as Donal’s Donuts and had T-shirts printed.
The Lions trailed ACT 21-11 at one stage but, spearheaded by Guscott, they came roaring back to win 41-25, triggering a momentum shift on the tour that inspired the Test team.
The following Saturday the Lions defeated Australia in a game known as the Battle of Ballymore. The Wallabies complained afterwards about the “violence” and the prospect of “open warfare” in the third Test. It never materialised. David Campese gifted Evans a try and the Lions, for the first time, had won a Test series from 1-0 down.
One of the issues four years later was that some of the midweek team in New Zealand lacked the same commitment of Donal’s Donuts. It was also the last squad picked by committee. Ian McGeechan, the coach, felt the horse-trading proved costly and he said he would only lead the 1997 Lions on the grounds that he ran selection.
Even so, the Lions won the second Test in 1993 by scoring a record number of points to force a decider with a 20-7 win. The Lions then led 10-0 in the third match, but they could not withstand the ferocity of the All Blacks onslaught.
The 1997 tour sits alongside 1971 and 1974, partly because the joy and success of the venture was captured in a brilliant documentary. The powerful speeches from McGeechan and Jim Telfer stir the emotions to this day. “They were all about realising that inner spirit that we had,” Matt Dawson says.
The Lions did just that. Their forwards stood up to the might of the Springboks and they won the first Test 25-16, helped by Dawson’s cheeky show-and-go try. The Lions clinched the series by winning the second Test 18-15 after an epic defensive performance and a drop-goal from Guscott.
Acclaim the most astonishing defensive performance, the most remarkable courage in adversity, in rugby history. Acclaim the counterattacks of the last ten minutes when the siege was raised, and with a short, stabbing, yet soaring drop-goal by Jeremy Guscott, the Lions took the lead. Acclaim the 1997 British Lions, victors in the Test series in the home of the world champions. Now we have seen it all. June 29, 1997, The Sunday Times
Part three: Rancour and revival (2001-2025)
Success in 1997 transformed the whole concept of the Lions. Lenihan was manager of the Australia tour in 2001, which he views as the start of the modern-day Lions; the birth of this commercial and sporting travel phenomenon.
The sea of red at the first Test in Brisbane was astonishing and it inspired a famous victory.
“I still remember Martin Johnson’s face as we came out on to the pitch for the toss,” Lenihan says. “We looked around at each other and said, ‘F*** me.’ Johnno is not a guy who gets overexcited. He almost sprinted down the stairs into the changing room, called everyone together and said, ‘Lads, you have no idea what’s out there.’ ”
But from a rugby perspective, the Lions were finding their feet as a professional entity. Martyn Williams, the former Wales flanker, describes 2001 and 2005 as being “guinea pig tours in professionalism”.
It still eats away at Johnson that the 2001 Lions, with all the talent at their disposal, did not go on to win a compelling Test series. The players were exhausted. Some had played a 50-game season and were being asked by the coach, Graham Henry, to train for three hours a day and to memorise detailed sheets of multi-phase plays.
It was less fun than 1997 and that led to rancour behind the scenes, which spilt over into a newspaper column written by Dawson, who complained the players were being treated like children.
“We weren’t professional for long enough to realise that actually less is more [in training]. On this occasion, more was becoming less,” Dawson says.
Lenihan, who had threatened to send Dawson home, explains on the podcast that England were a much more professional outfit — the only team with a defence coach, for example — and so the other players needed to be up-skilled.
If Henry diluted the traditional Lions ethos in 2001, then Sir Clive Woodward abandoned it altogether four years later, deciding the best way to manage the tour was to run almost distinct midweek and Saturday teams. The lessons of Donal’s Donuts had been swiftly forgotten.
The reality is that the Lions would not have beaten New Zealand that year however they had approached the tour. Dan Carter produced a tour de force in the second Test. No amount of spin from Alastair Campbell, who had been drafted in as a communications adviser after his time in No10, could change that.
But it meant the Lions had lost the series and lost their soul, while their place in the rugby calendar was being squeezed. Who better to act as saviour in 2009 than McGeechan?
The “Lion King” restored the right balance on a tour to South Africa that culminated in an epic Test series. The second Test, with the Springboks 1-0 up, was one of the great games — if utterly brutal for the Lions, physically and emotionally.
Schalk Burger was sent to the sin-bin inside the first minute for gouging Luke Fitzgerald. That night the Lions had five players in hospital, including Brian O’Driscoll, who had been concussed in a huge hit from Danie Rossouw. The injuries took their toll as South Africa whittled away the Lions’ 19-8 lead before Morné Steyn sealed the series with a gut-wrenching, last-minute penalty.
It was the most savage final act imaginable, it was far less than the Lions deserved. It was a day when their vast courage and their ill-fortune vied with each other so compellingly, and in the end, it was ill-fortune which prevailed.
June 27, 2009, The Sunday Times
Warren Gatland became the second Kiwi Lions coach in 2013, overseeing a series win in Australia to keep the feel-good factor high before defying the odds to draw the series in New Zealand four years later; the best Lions result against the All Blacks since 1971.
It was another memorable campaign. Sean O’Brien scored one of the great Lions tries in the first Test and Gatland’s men roared back to level the series in Wellington, where thousands of supporters danced in the rain and sang, “Oh, Maro Itoje”.
The decider finished 15-15 after Sam Warburton talked the referee into changing his mind about awarding a kickable last-gasp penalty to the All Blacks.
It was a supreme piece of captaincy. To this day, Warburton is an advocate of golden-point extra time in Lions Tests. But the tour ended with an iconic picture of both teams mixed in together as Warburton and Kieran Read, the All Blacks captain, lifted the trophy.
Those cordial scenes could not have been any different in 2021, when the tour to South Africa was marred by Covid and a toxic atmosphere between the two sides. The hostility was triggered by Rassie Erasmus’ hour-long video evisceration of Nic Berry’s refereeing performance in the first Test, which the Lions had won.
The Springboks fought back to win a forgettable series, with Steyn stepping up 12 years on from 2009 to once again stroke over the series-clinching penalty.
And so on to Australia. Andy Farrell’s first tour as head coach. Warburton was among a host of former captains who had dinner with Itoje before the tour, connecting the 2025 captain to great leaders from the Lions past.
“The history is very important,” Warburton says. “If you turn up to the Lions and you don’t know what happened four, eight, 12, 50 years ago, it doesn’t have the same meaning.”
There really is nothing like the Lions; the last great, enduring sporting adventure.
