When they come to rank the all-time great individual performances by British and Irish Lions, Simon Shaw’s in the forbidding temple of Springbokdom at Loftus Versfeld in 2009 will take some beating.
The Bristolian had served his time on three previous tours of South Africa, Australia and New Zealand some way down the pecking order behind Martin Johnson, Jeremy Davidson, Paul O’Connell etc when Warren Gatland picked him for the momentous second Test in Pretoria.
Doing so meant dropping Alun Wyn Jones. At the age of almost 36, Shaw responded with a tour de force which had to be seen to be beli...