For many rugby fans, the abiding memory of Lions tours and Tests is the celluloid experience of Living With Lions. And, more specifically, of Jim Telfer's stirring soliloquies. Richard Bath talks to him in The Scotsman.
"The single most important quality, says Telfer, is to pick a squad of team players. "Being former Lions ourselves, we were looking for players with good communication skills off the field, guys who could put to one side the fact that they were English or Welsh or whatever and feel that being a Lion was greater than being captain of Wales or England," says Telfer.
"Telfer is candid about the fact that nationality affects selection decisions. The Irish, he says, are good tourists; the Welsh are not. That wasn't an issue in 1997, however, as most of the Welsh players in the squad were among the former rugby league players who were central to the success of the tour.
"There's no doubt that some countries produce people who don't tour well. The Welsh get very homesick, so we had to choose extrovert Welshmen like Ieuan Evans. It was helped by the fact that lots of the Welshmen we took had been in rugby league and had seen a bit more of professional sport."
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