British Lions match in New Zealand so brutal that Scottish star feared players could DIE
Legendary 1971 Lions are the ONLY British & Irish team to win a series against the All Blacks in 11 tours going back to 1908
THE legendary 1971 Lions are the ONLY British & Irish team to win a series against the mighty All Blacks in 11 tours going back to 1908.
All the magic and drama of that series has been captured in a new book When Lions Roared by Tom English and Peter Burns.
Wales’ John Dawes captained a squad which lost just twice on a marathon 26-match tour which lasted three months — in the opening warm-up game in Queensland and in the Second Test match against New Zealand.
SunSport has picked out just two of the best tales from 46 years ago . . .
Keep up to date with the latest British and Irish Lions news with our blow-by-blow blog
THE Battle of Canterbury . . . it’s a game that is remembered by the Lions at the heart of it as the DIRTIEST match in rugby history.
Willie John McBride, the colossal Irishman, called it a “filthy battle”.
The great Welsh scrum-half Gareth Edwards said it was one of only two days in his entire 13-year career in which he felt scared.
And Gordon Brown, the late Scottish lock, once said that he was surprised nobody was killed.
It was that kind of affair at Lancaster Park, when the Lions beat the brutes of Canterbury 14-9.
The Lions had swept all before them in New Zealand including a 47-9 demolition job on Wellington, who were one of the great powerhouses of the land.
But on June 19, a week before the First Test against the All Blacks, the tourists pitched up in Christchurch to face Canterbury.
The whole of New Zealand was beginning to panic about the form the Lions were bringing into the series.
Canterbury were charged with bringing them back down to earth . . . by whatever means necessary. The violence started at the very first scrum.
Sandy Carmichael, the big Scot, was a devastating force in the Lions’ front-row — and how the Kiwis knew it.
Alister Hopkinson, who was Carmichael’s opposing prop, went to town on him, landing uppercut after uppercut flush on the prop’s face.
Carmichael left the field with both his eyes closed and his face broken, his tour over.
But that was just the beginning of it all.
Irish tighthead Ray McLoughlin took offence at the violence and so met force with force.
But McLoughlin broke his thumb punching Canterbury hardman Alex Wyllie and was also out of the tour. Those two would be joined on the Lions injury list by the great Fergus Slattery, who was blindsided by Hopkinson and had his front teeth cracked down to the root.
The Irish flanker played most of the game with concussion.
Slattery recalled “I didn’t have a clue where I was.
“I went to Peter Dixon — the England back-row — at the next lineout and asked ‘Where are we?’ He looked at me all agitated and said, ‘We’re in bloody Canterbury!’
“About ten minutes later I asked him again — but he’d just been smacked and had no idea. I only realised where I was in the final quarter of the game.”
Incident followed incident. At one point the Lions even considered walking off the pitch.
McBride — who went on to captain the Lions in South Africa four years later — laid their options on the line.
He said: “I said to the guys, ‘Look, there are two ways this is going to go now. We either go back to the dressing room and forget about this or we stand and fight.
“And I’m going to stand here and fight’.”
All Blacks captain Colin Meads insisted the Lions should have expected the treatment they received that day.
He recalled: ‘They got away with murder earlier in the tour just lying all over the ball and slowing it up. Try doing that against Canterbury and you’ll soon know what they think about it.’
But McLoughlin was having none of that.
The Irishman said: ‘That’s a load of bull***t. The violence in the Canterbury match had nothing to do with us killing the ball.
“Fergus Slattery got whacked at a lineout, Sandy was taken out in the scrum — no one was lying on the ball in those situations.
“Gareth Edwards was targeted and was punched in open play — that had nothing to do with our rucking.”
Slattery paints a simpler picture of the whole game.
The Irishman said: “Canterbury just went out to kick the s**t out of us.”
Canterbury’s Wyllie, however, reckons many of the Lions’ recollections were a gross over-exaggeration.
He said: ‘‘Bloody hell! It was just a bit of biff.”
For the Lions, the match was a line in the sand.
McBride added: “The guys were great. They all stood up, we won the fight, we won the match and it was bloody marvellous. That was the day we grew up.”
After the Battle of Canterbury, the Lions were a tighter group than ever and having withstood the onslaught at Lancaster Park they were more than ready for four Tests against the All Blacks.
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