Brendan Gallagher: Lamentable affair which left the Lions in doldrums

From the outside looking in, the 1966 Lions visit to New Zealand seems like a calamitous affair. A first ever Test series whitewash for any Lions squad; a captain who stepped down because he didn’t warrant a place in the team; rumours of the large Welsh contingent failing to properly gel with the other nations; the blatant attempts of New Zealand’s provincial teams to rough up the Lions ahead of the Tests plus the usual dollop of suspect refereeing favouring the home side at crucial times.
At one stage, in the week before the second Test, the Lions tour manager Des O’Brien also disappeared on a mystery visit to Fiji while for much of the tour the coach John Robins – curiously designated as the assistant manager – was hobbling around on crutches after snapping an Achilles tendon at a charity game.
One injury replacement, full-back Terry Davies, was still limping from a recent knee operation when he flew into New Zealand and the Lions even managed to lose to British Columbia in Vancouver on the way home when half the side should probably have been in hospital nursing second degree burns after way too much sun on the beach in Hawaii en route.
If you were ever going to make a Carry On film about Lions rugby, perhaps with a touch of Groundhog Day, this is your tour. If you include an opening salvo of eight games in Australia, it comprised 35 matches over the course of five months. And all of that undertaken with the regulation 30-man squad. In the modern era it was all too much and after 1966 the Lions cut their itinerary down noticeably.
And yet the ‘Boys of 66′ still had their moments, not least a record 31-0 win over Australia in the second Test at Brisbane, a crushing victory that perhaps promoted false hopes as they crossed the Tasman Sea. Even in New Zealand the second and third Tests against the All Blacks were fiercely contested and it’s not inconceivable the Lions could have won both.
Mike Gibson and David Watkins shone brightly in the backs while the oft forgotten Ronnie Lamont – a New Zealand Almanac Player of the Year for 1966 – slugged it out heroically up front and the likes Willie John McBride and Jim Telfer made their mark. Like their predecessors in 1950 and 1959, the 1966 tourists were popular, accessible and fondly remembered although that possibly offers but scant consolation.
In retrospect, it all started badly when the two obvious captaincy candidates – Alun Pask and Ray McLoughlin – were overlooked for the compromise choice of Mike Campbell-Lamerton, a popular Anglo-Scot and serving soldier who had overcome a broken back when he fell 60 feet from a helicopter to continue his sporting career.
In his pomp Campbell-Lamerton had been an ever present at No.8 for the Lions in the 1962 Test series against South Africa and a stalwart lock for Scotland, but at nearly 33 he hadn’t played Test rugby for a year and was very much in the autumn of his career.
Mistake then piled upon mistake. Take the coaching appointment. Robins, a former Wales and Lions Test player, was an outstanding PE graduate and cutting edge rugby thinker from Loughborough and head of sport at Sheffield University, who was expected to have a considerable input into proceedings.
Somewhere along the way, however, wires became crossed or egos clashed. O’Brien and Campbell-Lamerton saw Robins merely as the chap in a tracksuit tasked with organising warm-ups and slicing the oranges for half-time.
Initially the Lions flattered to deceive. The results and attacking style of rugby in Australia had initially been encouraging but the Lions were immediately ambushed by the itinerary. From sultry Brisbane they flew directly to the freezing wastelands of Invercargill and were beaten-up by a very physical Southland side in their opening game. Welcome to New Zealand.
The Lions lost three of their first five games in New Zealand and never really recovered and their thinking became increasingly muddled. Before the vital first Test in Dunedin, for reasons unknown, they sent the Test squad and one or two ball carriers up to Queenstown for the week.
A delightful mountain resort in the summer or when the weather is benign, no question, but possibly not the place for a midwinter camp. The snows and ice had set in, the hotel was freezing cold and there wasn’t a useable rugby pitch to be found.
Army man Campbell-Lamerton, above, took his team yomping up snow plastered foothills most mornings but the only rugby training all week was when the Lions stumbled on the idea of using the grass runway of the small local airport which was regularly swept clear of snow. It meant diving for cover every time a plane approached or took off but hey-ho.
There are always tensions in every tour party but you sensed a few more than normal in 1966. Jim Telfer later recalled a “Welsh clique would regularly sit at the back of the bus and sing  We are the Triple Crown Boys and quite openly shun Delme Thomas, the Llanelli forward who hadn’t been capped. Willie John McBride, meanwhile, delivered a withering broadside on fellow second row Brian Price in his autobiography
“I got bloody annoyed at the lack of desire and determination to stand up to the All Blacks on the field. One of the players who epitomised our failure was Brian Price. Now Price ought to have been a man the New Zealanders respected. He had played in Newport‘s winning team against the 1963 All Blacks. Price had also played for Wales since 1961 and should have been one of the rocks of the Lions pack in 1966.
“He was a great line-out forward, a far better jumper than me, but he couldn’t take the rough and tumble. Colin Meads targeted him just as Meads had done with myself in Dublin three years earlier. Trouble was Price was not like me, he wasn’t prepared to belt Meads and stop the nonsense that went on. So of course, Meads simply rode roughshod over the Welshman who seemed content to melt into the background and lose his Test place.”
The Lions were never in the first Test, losing 20-3, a margin that would have been more had New Zealand not missed a host of goal kicks. It was time for a serious pow-wow and big far-reaching decisions… at which point O’Brien disappeared to Fiji. Rumours abounded in the Press about a pre-booked personal holiday or a rest cure ordered by doctors after an extremely stressful couple of months, but the truth might be a tad more prosaic.
The Lions had wanted to fit in a game in Fiji but just couldn’t find a slot so, by way of an olive branch, it seems O’Brien was dispatched to Suva to fly the flag a little and to make appropriately positive noises about possible future visits. All fine and dandy but possibly not a good idea in the most important week of the tour when your captain – who had lost two stone with the stress of it all – was pondering whether to drop himself.
In the end Campbell- Lamerton opted to stand down – one of six changes from the first Test – and was admired and applauded internally for his honesty. David Watkins, soon to head north for a stellar League career, took over as captain and the Lions really shaped up in the second Test.
They led 9-8 at half-time and agonisingly had tries by Mike Gibson and Colin McFadyean chalked off when the referee Pat Murphy called the Lions back to give the Lions put-ins at scrums after All Blacks infringements. It never rains but pours. Tries by Meads and flying wing Tony Steel eventually saw New Zealand scrape home 16-12.
A strange insanity can sometimes descend on Lions tours and as the third Test approached the Lions spent an entire training session seeing if the 6ft 5in Campbell-Lamerton, right, a man with a history of traumatic spinal injuries remember, could somehow be slotted into the team at prop ahead of the specialists.  Eventually the Lions saw the error of their ways although their eventual solution was equally bonkers. Young Welsh lock Delme Thomas – uncapped by his country but a stand-out in the second Test at lock for the Lions – was shunted into the front row. Incredibly Thomas survived unscathed, a noble effort.
A 19-6 defeat in the third Test was also cruel. The Lions had scored two fine first half tries through Lamont and Watkins but two penalties from Mick Williment meant remarkably it was only 6-6 at half-time. After the break the Lions squandered three guilt edged try-scoring chances before New Zealand made the best of their good fortune, recovering strongly to score three second half tries – two for Waka Nathan and another for Steel.
It was a weary team that took the field in the final Test but, despite being reduced to 14 men when captain for the day Pask departed with a broken collar bone, the tourists trailed only 10-8 at half-time after outstanding tries by Sandy Hinshelwood and McFadyean. Hope springs eternal but eventually they ran out of steam and New Zealand cruised home 24-11
You couldn’t help but feel for the Lions as they made their long way home via two missionary games in Canada.
A stopover in Honolulu and a day in the surf at Waikiki was a wonderful way of letting off steam but predictably most of the team suffered from severe sunburn.
Even before sunburn struck there were only 12 fully fit players left and it was a horribly motley crew that took the field against British Columbia at the Empire Stadium in Vancouver – virtually the Canadian XV. The Lions did the unthinkable and lost 8-3 and although they did beat Canada 19-8 in Toronto later that week it was high time to head home.
As the Beach Boys’ big hit of that summer said: “This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on!”