When the first test of the 2013 tour of the British and Irish Lions let’s just call them the Lions and be done with it, nobody thinks we’re referring to Millwall rolls around on June 21, it will be 12 years.
Unless one of our three sparks something in training camp or in the early matches, it’s pretty safe to say that Tom Smith’s status as the last Scot to start a Lions’ Test will be lengthened. Tom played in all six tests on his two Lions tours, in South Africa in 1997 and Australia in 2001.
Is the doughty, mobile prop the greatest Scottish player of the professional era? His Lions record would suggest so, but you’d certainly get an argument around Scottish rugby circles about that. And it’s feasible he might have never played for the Lions had anyone else but Jim Telfer been the forwards coach in 1997.
The last time the Scots had more than one player in the Lions test team was the historic second test against the Springboks in Durban, when Tom, Gregor Townsend and Alan Tait played. Like Tom, Taity maybe wouldn’t have got a test slot had the coaches not been Scottish and aware of his versatile skills.
Since Tom, we’ve had no starters and just two replacements, both hookers Gordon Bulloch as a replacement once in the ill-fated `05 tour, and Ross Ford twice as replacement in South Africa four years ago.
Ford was a late call-up for that tour, and we had only two original selections, Euan Murray and Nathan Hines, in the party. In `05, there were just three Bulloch, Simon Taylor and Chris Cusiter. In `01, three again in Smith, Taylor and Scott Murray.
That’s just eight first-pick Lions in three tour squads, with a handful of injury call-ups to add.
You’d maybe have cause to argue for a couple more in each case, but no more. While it seems odd to us Scots that, for example, Chris Paterson was never a Lion, it reflects Scotland’s position in European rugby during this era and the status accorded to our players in the other Home Unions.
It does ask a question about whether this continuing lack of representation, however meritorious, reflects negatively upon Scottish support for the Lions.
Personally, I find it does. The New Zealand tour of `05 almost damaged the Lions brand beyond repair and I was one of many who believed that the tours had become an anachronism in modern rugby, just a step above the Harlem Globetrotters-style ethos of the Barbarians.
South Africa in 2009 changed my mind a little, but mostly because for rugby reasons the second test was the most scarily intense sporting contest I think I’ve ever seen, and compelling for that reason.
But the Lions have failed to stir nationalistic or tribal sympathies for some time for Scots, partly because we don’t simply subscribe to British-ness in the same way we used to. Irish interest slumped when they had only Nick Popplewell in 1993 and really only sparked again with their current golden generation, hence the recent insistence that it is “British and Irish” Lions when they never much minded before.
I’m not insisting that the Scots have some kind of a pro-rata representation, the Lions are picking the best players to win even if they don’t do very often.
But it’s only natural that I’ll be roaring a little louder for them in front of the TV this summer if Hogg, Maitland and Gray are playing. And there’s no reason to apologise for that.