The greatest Lions: Sir Ian McGeechan
In a series building up to the 2017 tour to New Zealand, we remember some of the greatest players to ever wear the Lions jersey.
Next up is a player whose legacy with the red jersey began as a player on two tours in the 1970s, before he went on to coach the British and Irish Lions on five tours, four times as head coach.
Many players have worn the Lions jersey with pride and written their names into history, but one man truly embodies what it means to a British and Irish Lion more than anyone else. We are of course talking about the great Sir Ian McGeechan.
Starting with his stint with the Lions as a player, McGeechan toured with the Lions in 1974 and 1977, tasting victory in South Africa and defeat in New Zealand.
The Scotland international who played at fly-half or centre started seven out of the eight Tests he played for the Lions, including all four games on that remarkable tour of South Africa in 1974 under Willie John McBride.
McGeechan, used at 12 or 13, found himself in remarkable company in the Lions’ backline, with Sir Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett running the show at half-back, Scotland great Andy Irvine out on the wing and JPR Williams maraudaring forward from full-back – all behind a pack regarded now as rugby royalty; McBride, Brown, Cotton, Uttley, Slattery, Windsor, Mervyn Davies.
As he told the Telegraph, it was a transformative experience.
“I never anticipated playing in ’74, but ended up in all four Tests because I built up such a good centre partnership with Dick Milliken,” McGeechan said.
“The trip changed me; playing next to and getting respect from great players like Gareth Edwards and JPR Williams gave me a different perception of what I, or indeed what any team, could achieve.
“It was a shame we did not come away with that perfect record but after winning the first three Tests, we had a lot of illness when we went for the sweep in Johannesburg. I was ill all week and had to get out of bed to play two matches, including the final Test, which ended in a draw.”
And this of course was long before the days of any sense of professional dedicate training time, as McGeechan told the Guardian.
“I had to train on my own before the tour, and I trained every day, with my wife holding a stopwatch, to make sure I would be as fit as anybody else in the party.
“The Lions was the closest you got to being professionals,” he adds. “Because that was the only time when you woke up in the morning and the only thing on your mind was your rugby and the training.” That work-rate came to define his Lions career.
The ‘Invincibles’ tour as 1974 has come to be known, featuring the ’99 call’ in Port Elizabeth, was followed by a 3-1 series defeat to New Zealand three years later.
Looking back now, McGeechan recognises that tour as a wasted opportunity. “Rugby in the British Isles in the Seventies was the best in the world,” he told the Telegraph.
“The 1971 and ’74 Lions’ tours showed that and 1977 should have done too. People forget that the All Blacks just could not compete with the Lions up front to the point where they were reduced to employing a three-man scrum.
“Yet we just were not clever enough to take proper advantage and lost the series 3-1. It was a huge opportunity lost but also a bit depressing because all I can remember now was four months of rain!”
The fourth and final Test, a 10-9 defeat at Eden Park when all the Lions points were scored by scrum-half Doug Morgan, would be McGeechan’s last as a player for the side.
He retired from international rugby two years later, after a 21-17 defeat to France at the Parc des Princes, having won 32 Test caps.
A continuation of his career as a teacher was an obvious path forward but McGeechan built his repetoire as a coach, starting as an assistant on the Scotland coach staff, with who he would win a Six Nations championship in 1990. McGeechan became renowned for his level of detail, and the way top players responded to his input.
The year before that in 1989, he coached the Lions for the first time on their 1989 tour of Australia, making history as the side became the first to win a Test series despite losing the first Test.
McGeechan’s Lions were hammered 30-12 by the Wallabies but made key changes, adding Mike Teague and Rob Andrew to the starting XV, along with a Lions debut for a 23-year-old Jeremy Guscott.
Turning in an aggressive performance the Lions upset the odds, winning 19-12 but with McGeechan feeling the need to back his players in the face of criticism from Australia.
“When players are motivated in that way, you have occasions when players will react. I don’t think there was anything vicious in it.”
That controverisal win set up a decider in Sydney remembered now for David Campese’s famous pass (for the wrong reasons) inside his in-goal area which Ieuan Evans pounced upon to break the deadlock, before Gavin Hastings booted the Lions to victory.
Four years later the Lions ended up losing the decider to the All Blacks, having been beaten in Christchurch and then bounced back to win 20-7 in Wellington, their largest ever winning margin over New Zealand.
McGeechan was the first coach to take charge of the Lions on two tours and the chance of consecutive series wins was alive. But despite opening up a 10-0 lead the All Black would not be denied, storming back to win the contest 30-13 and with it the series.
Next came McGeechan’s most famous triumph, a 2-1 series win in 1997 against the world champions South Africa, the first Lions tour of the professional era.
The ‘Living With Lions’ documentary that covered the tour is a must-watch for any rugby supporter, famous for Jim Telfer’s ‘Everest’ speech before the first Test, not to mention Matt Dawson’s dummy and Guscott’s series-clinching drop goal. There was also a surprising choice as captain – Martin Johnson, the England lock yet to lead his country.
He wrote in the Telegraph: “I had watched him on the field for Leicester and had seen how players responded to him and respected him. I thought: “If I was a player going on to the field in South Africa, I’d want to follow this bloke.”
“It was not, as it turned out, such a bad call.”
The Lions were overwhelming underdogs prior to that first Test in Cape Town and yet pulled off one of the Lions’ greatest ever series wins. Propelled by the boot of Neil Jenkins over the course of the first two Tests, the Lions clung on in Durban to win the series 2-1.
Having coached three tours and won two, the time seemed perfect for McGeechan’s time with the Lions to come to an end.
Yet he appeared again in 2005, a tour not remembered for being any type of success, as the coach of the midweek side in New Zealand and winning seven of the eight matches outside of the Test series.
The success of those matches no doubt played a part in him being considered for a remarkable fourth tour as head coach in 2009 against South Africa. Not forgetting his clear attachment to the touring side and what they represented.
20 years after he first coached the side, and 35 since his first tour as a player, McGeechan took charge of the Lions for the final time. And after bitter, disappointing outcomes to the tours in 2001 and 2005, even if the 2009 tour was not a success on the pitch, it jumpstarted the love felt for the Lions back home.
Many reading this will no doubt remember where they were when Morné Steyn’s long-range penalty clinched both the second Test and the series at Loftus. McGeechan prior to the third Test implored the players to create something for supporters to take forward to 2013, to leave something for the next group of Lions to draw inspiration from. The 29-8 win, featuring tries from Shane Williams and Ugo Monye, did just that.
Reflecting on the speech above, his last as a Lions coach, McGeechan said: “Being involved time and again with the Lions has affected me on an emotional level. There is a film of me addressing the team in South Africa in 2009 before the last Test when I broke down in tears afterwards.
“It was because I knew it was the last time I would ever speak to a group of Lions players and the emotions of all those years, and what they had meant to me, just flooded out of me.”
Few have given more to the Lions cause. But no one encapsulates what it means to be a Lion better than McGeechan, and his three tours wins as a player or coach.