Читать книгу Once Were Lions: The Players’ Stories: Inside the World’s Most Famous Rugby Team - Jeff Connor - Страница 9

The 1955 tour to South Africa was the first to see the initial journey south undertaken by air, albeit in a propellor-driven aircraft rather than one of the new-fangled jets of the time. But the accolade of being the first Lion to fly south had gone five years earlier to Lewis Jones, the Welsh full-back who made the then long and hazardous journey to New Zealand to replace George Norton who was injured early in the 1950 tour.

Now known universally as the Lions, the tourists were eagerly awaited in South Africa. Having whitewashed the All Blacks in a four Test series in 1949, and having toured Britain, Ireland and France in 1951–52, completing the Grand Slam against the Five Nations and the Barbarians—Scotland in particular were humiliated 44–0—and losing only one of 31 matches, the Springboks rightly considered themselves to be the champions of the world. Their devoted fans wanted them to prove it against the Lions, while the whole rugby-mad country was simply brimming over with excitement at the arrival of the tourists for the first time in 17 years.

It was also the first tour to be heavily covered by the press, a few of whose representatives, most notably former Lion and all round-sports-man Viv Jenkins, travelled constantly with the party—Jenkins eventually wrote a book about the tour. The first newsreel films of matches were shown in British cinemas, helping to build public awareness of the Lions, while from the likes of Jenkins, Clem Thomas and Cliff Morgan we have been handed down highly readable accounts of the tour. In short, the 1955 tour is the first where most of the action on and off the pitch was well documented.

The captain for the tour was again an Irishman, Robin Thompson of Instonians and Ireland, and though his playing ability was criticized, most notably by Clem Thomas, his quiet assuredness and capacity for hard work were undoubted, while he was desperately unlucky to be injured in the second Test. The vice-captain was the Scottish full-back Angus Cameron, but a knee injury curtailed his contribution. The manager was a large Belfast man, Jack Siggins, who had no hesitation in laying down the law to what was deliberately a young party. Siggins felt that only athletic youthful types would be able to cope with the conditions in South Africa, and discouraged the selectors from picking anyone over the age of 30—he originally wanted 27 as the cut-off age—with only Trevor Lloyd of Maesteg and Wales being past his 30th birthday.

Bryn Meredith of Newport was the first-choice hooker in the squad. He recalled:

There were great players like Jack Kyle, Jack Matthews and Bleddyn Williams who could have played, but the manager didn’t want anyone over the age of 30. He made his decision and that was the end of that. But we still had a team of great quality.

Personally, I was surprised to be chosen. When you start off you never think you’re good enough for your village side, then you never think you’re good enough for your country and who was I to think I was good enough for the Lions?

I was a schoolmaster at the time and how else was I ever going to go abroad to play rugby? So when I heard I was selected I was always going to go and that was that, even though I was just married at the time, and my wife Betty had to go and live with her parents while I was away. It can’t have been too bad for her—we’re still together all these years later.

The result of the age limit was that young stars emerged and made themselves famous on that tour, with the two best known being Cliff Morgan of Wales and Tony O’Reilly of Ireland. The former would become a much-loved broadcaster and senior figure in the BBC, while the latter, who celebrated his 19th birthday on the tour, became a very wealthy businessman and owner of newspapers, who organized, and paid for, reunions of the Lions from his era. The exploits of the handsome and witty O’Reilly as a Lion and afterwards in business could fill a book by themselves, and Bryn Meredith credits the Irishman with helping to maintain the strong squad atmosphere that persists among the surviving 1955 Lions: ‘He is the one that has kept us together, organizing the reunions and taking us to see the 2007 World Cup Final. I don’t think the modern professionals will be doing that sort of thing in years to come—these days they want paid for crossing the road.’

O’Reilly may have been the individual star, but on that 1955 tour the dominant figure was Cliff Morgan, who led by example and brought his keen intelligence to bear on tactics. Dickie Jeeps, one of the great characters of rugby union for nearly 60 years, recalled that he got his place in the Test team, despite being second or third choice scrum-half, because Morgan wanted him alongside:

I hadn’t even played for England by then, but Cliff was a great player and fortunately for me he liked the way I played, passing the ball to the front of him so he could run on to it.

It meant that Trevor Lloyd rarely got a game, and I was so concerned for him that I went to see Jack Siggins to ask that Trevor should play. He just growled ‘I manage this team, not you,’ so it was hard for Trevor as he only played in about five games.

Morgan, the excellent English centre Jeff Butterfield, and O’Reilly were the fulcrum of a superb set of backs whose dashing play impressed their hosts throughout the almost four-month-long tour. Morgan repeatedly gave committed displays of controlling rugby in the No. 10 jersey, while O’Reilly dazzled on the wing or at centre, where he played in the final Test, with the flying Welsh sprinter Gareth Griffiths—a replacement for the injured Arthur Smith—and Cecil Pedlow sharing the wing duties as necessary.

Butterfield had an important role to play on the tour. Jeeps recalled:

Danny Davies from Cardiff was the assistant manager, but he was a quiet man, shall we say. Jeff Butterfield was a fitness fanatic, and he used to take the training and I can tell you, we trained harder on that tour than any other.

We were pretty fit anyway, though I remember my father, who had fought in the First World War and been wounded, telling me when I was first selected for England that he was still faster than me. So we had a race—and he won!

The forwards were more than useful, and for all four Tests the Lions had the same men in jersey numbers 1 to 3, with Bryn Meredith flanked by Swansea’s Billy Williams and Neath’s Courtenay Meredith making up an all-Welsh front row—the only tour since the war where one country has supplied the hooker and both props for all the Tests. Fellow Welshman Rhys Williams and captain Thompson usually provided the boiler room, with Scotland’s Jim Greenwood the only ever-present flanker in the Tests.

Hugh McLeod was a tough prop forward from the Borders who might well have made the Test team and indeed would do so in 1959, but he lost out in 1955.

‘I had no difficulty accepting the manager’s decision to select the Welsh guys in front of me,’ said McLeod.

I had just completed my national service—indeed I got away five weeks early so I could join the tour—and in the army you learn that orders is orders, and there was no arguing once the decision had been made.

The fact is that I felt lucky to be on the tour at all. If it had not been for my mother and my future wife I wouldn’t have been able to go on the tour because it was a rule that you had to have £40 in your wallet and that was a lot of money in those days. You also had to supply all your own gear except for a tie, and it was thanks to them that I was able to go.

McLeod did acquire something on tour—a nickname: ‘That fellow O’Reilly was awful quick with the gab, and the first time he saw me I was wearing my tracksuit with the legs rolled up about my knees. “Look,” O’Reilly said, “it’s an abbot”, and the name stuck from then on.’

There were plenty of colourful figures on the tour, not the least of whom was an ordained army chaplain, the Rev. Robin Roe of Lansdowne, London Irish and Ireland, who would go on to win the Military Cross for his bravery while serving with the Lancashire Regiment in Aden in 1967, when he rescued soldiers from a blazing lorry under heavy gunfire. The medal citation read: ‘His courage and example in the face of danger has been outstanding and his infectious enthusiasm and confidence under all conditions has been an inspiration to the whole Battalion.’ A Lion even when he was wearing a dog collar—what manner of men were these?

Of them all, the Rev. Roe had perhaps the most misgivings about touring a land already disfigured by the apartheid policy of the ruling National Party with its Afrikaaner majority. Most of the Lions were not in the slightest politically minded, but a few such as Roe were troubled by what they were going to encounter. Yet he and the others decided to go, if only to see for themselves what the morally repugnant system was like.

Meredith said:

We didn’t know what apartheid meant, but you soon realized that it meant that blacks went one way and whites another, and that there was demarcation everywhere. It didn’t affect us much because we only met the people that wanted to meet us anyway, but it was certainly an eye-opener when sometimes a black man would come up and start talking to you for two minutes and then he would say ‘I had better go now because someone might think I’m accosting you.’

I remember a boxer coming to talk with us and he said ‘I’d better go now in case I get accused’, and off he went.

Apartheid was one reason why the tour got off to a surprising start for the participants. They had gathered at Eastbourne College for pre-tour training and a get-together when a Foreign Office mandarin gave them a strong lecture on the ban on associating with non-whites. In particular, he stressed that on no account was there to be any sex with black or mixed-race people as that was a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment. It was a rude awakening about the realities of apartheid.

One of the perhaps forgotten men of that tour was Scottish lock forward Ernest Michie, who has rarely given interviews about his days as a Lion, but was happy to speak for this book. He said: ‘I missed out on the Foreign Office speech because I was a couple of days late in joining the party due to having to sit my final exams at Aberdeen University. But I remember the message loud and clear—don’t talk about politics and be pretty circumspect about who you speak to.’

Michie is disarmingly modest about his achievement in being selected:

I had played for Scotland but I was very surprised to be chosen. The University side was on a tour to London, going by bus which took about 20 hours because there was no motorway in those days.

We stopped every so often for a cup of tea, and at Watford or somewhere I was dozing on the bus when one of the chaps, Doug Robbie, who is now a doctor, came back from his cuppa and said ‘Your name’s in the list of British Lions.’ I said to him. ‘Don’t be daft,’ and I really didn’t believe it until we met up with the London Scottish boys who included Dr Doug Smith, who had been a Lion in 1950 and would manage the 1971 Lions. He assured me it was true, so I began to believe it then.

Michie really began to believe it when he made his first-ever flight on an aeroplane, from Dyce Airport near Aberdeen to London to join the squad. At Eastbourne, the squad not only got their instructions from the Foreign Office but manager Siggins also handed out strict instructions on behavioural standards and gave out the rules on cash—they would be allowed just five shillings (25p) per day pocket money. In the event, some of the Lions augmented their income by selling their complimentary match tickets, and such was the demand for Test tickets in particular that some went for £50 each. That was strictly against the rules on amateurism, but either a blind eye was turned or Siggins knew perfectly well what was happening and ignored it.

Dickie Jeeps said: ‘There was indeed a black market in tickets, especially for the Tests where they could have sold the tickets ten times over. But by the time the first Test came around you would have made some friends, and that’s where most of the tickets went, though there was undoubtedly a sale of tickets which nobody admitted to.’

The Lions themselves came up with the most famous code of tour etiquette, which has been known to touring Lions ever since as Lloyd’s Law. During a team meeting with Siggins, Welsh scrum-half Trevor Lloyd suggested that if a player was lucky enough to get himself a girlfriend, no other player should attempt to muscle in, and all of them agreed to it. Some would suggest that Lloyd’s Law did not prove to be binding on subsequent tour parties.

The Lockheed Constellation aircraft which was to be their ‘safe’ conveyance to South Africa played its part in the early adventures of the tourists. The Lions had to board and disembark a couple of times before taking off from Heathrow, and for those who had never flown before, such as Welsh back row forward Russell Robins, already jangled nerves were stretched taut. More than 50 years later he recalled: ‘I’d never been on a plane before in my life and was beginning to feel nervous about it.’

The journey via Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, and Uganda took 36 hours, but the Lions were at least able to stretch their legs while the Lockheed was refilled with fuel and that most important of cargoes: booze.

On the flight between Khartoum and Nairobi, the captain encountered difficulties with the aircraft, which was being dragged down at the tail and veering in flight. Leaving the cockpit, he went to the rear where he found 20 sizeable young men crammed into a space designed for half-a-dozen people. The Lions were having a party, and how were they to know about such things as ‘trim’ and weight distribution? Ernest Michie confirmed:

There was nobody else left on the plane but us by that time. We were all moving about chatting to each other and having a drink and I don’t think the captain could work out what was going on as the plane became a bit unstable with the surge of bodies to and fro and back and forward. He came back to see what was happening, and found that hardly anybody was sitting in their own seats. He politely asked that, if it wasn’t too much trouble, could we sit in our seats now and again?

On arrival at Johannesburg in the middle of the night, the Lions were amazed to find a huge crowd waiting to greet them. ‘I honestly think there were 10,000 people there to greet us,’ said Jeeps. ‘It was packed, and was the first time we realized what we were getting into.’

Cliff Morgan had anticipated a welcoming party, though not a crowd of that size, and had appointed himself choirmaster, helped by Tom Reid of Ireland. Under Morgan’s tutelage, the Lions had learned the old Afrikaaner folk song ‘Sarie Marais’ with its jaunty chorus that translates into English as ‘O take me back to the old Transvaal, where my Sarie lives, Down among the maize fields near the green thorn tree, there lives my Sarie Marais’. The Lions gave voice in Afrikaans and were an instant hit.

Meredith said: ‘The people took us to their hearts, and decided we were the best ever touring side even before we played a game.’

As always, getting the men of five different nations to gel together was a crucial part of the tour. ‘If truth were to be told,’ said Ernest Michie, ‘the Irish and the Scots seemed to get on very well, but there was a preponderance of Welsh players in the squad and they tended to keep to themselves a little bit.’ Farmer Jeeps has a more pithy description: ‘The Welsh stuck together like shit to a blanket, as we said plenty of times on that tour.’

Yet gel they did, helped by Siggins’ decision to rotate room-mates every few weeks. In order to help that bonding process, the 1955 Lions also set out on their first public duty the day after they arrived—a supposedly leisurely round of golf. Once again, thousands of South Africans turned out to welcome the Lions, though what it did for their nerves on the first tee can only be guessed at.

The Lions soon found out just how different rugby was in South Africa. The forwards were dragged into the sort of physical encounters they had never experienced before, but usually won sufficient ball for the Lions’ superior backs to show their paces. The sheer quality of the Lions’ play entranced their South African hosts, who nevertheless did not stand back in admiration.

Hugh McLeod said: ‘I loved the hard ground, but a lot of the guys didn’t. There was no such thing as an easy game in South Africa, no matter who you were playing. They were big guys and always at you. But the harder the game, the more I liked it.’

On a tour again beset with injuries, Clem Thomas developed appendicitis, had the necessary operation, and was back playing within five weeks. Arthur Smith, the flying Scottish winger, was not so lucky, playing in only four matches after breaking a bone in his wrist—his turn would come seven years later.

Like Smith, the walking wounded were plentiful. The Rev. Robin Roe played matches at hooker with two cracked ribs. Reg Higgins tore ligaments in the first Test and missed half the tour, while Rhys Williams had two front teeth knocked out against the Orange Free State but played on as his incensed colleagues took their opponents apart with the best form of revenge, winning 31–3.

It was after that match that the Lions also took measures to protect themselves against ‘cheap shots’, as Thomas described them. ‘It became necessary to have a fixer to stop such unprovoked attacks’, wrote Thomas in the History. ‘I was made the avenging angel. Tony O’Reilly would come up to me and say “number four” or whatever, and I was supposed to go in and mete out punishment at the next opportunity, preferably at a nice loose maul. I don’t know how I got such a difficult job!’

The Lions were learning fast about the South African approach to rugby, and it soon became clear that, in the Tests, if the forwards could raise their game to match the Springbok pack, the backs could finish the job. South African rugby might well be of a different order to the homegrown variety, but it did not make it necessarily better.

The clash of cultures off the field was just as pronounced. Clem Thomas recalled being presented with the skin of a freshly shot leopard, and later on in the tour a farmer presented him with a lion cub. ‘Siggins insisted on me donating it to a local zoo, which I did with some relief’, wrote Thomas.

As Bryn Meredith put it, ‘there’s no point in going 7,000 miles and not seeing some of the country’ and by the time they had finished the tour, the Lions had covered more than 10,000 miles within southern Africa, including Rhodesia. All are agreed that a two-day visit to Kruger Park, the national wildlife reserve and safari centre, was the highlight: ‘Travel was a bit primitive, but Kruger Park was a wonderful experience—I’ve been back three times since,’ said Dickie Jeeps.

It was early on in the tour that a certain player did a disappearing act, having fallen in love with a local girl. His name has never been revealed and, true to their ties of brotherhood, even 50-odd years later his identity is still kept a secret. Apparently he really was injured, but not as badly as was made out and the only disease he was suffering from was lovesickness. The Romeo went off with his Juliet and missed several games as a consequence. He did eventually return to the party, and the cover story of his ‘injury’ held not only then but still does. ‘What went on tour stayed on tour, even though he went off tour,’ as one 1955 Lion put it. ‘Anyway, the rest of us were just jealous.’

Dickie Jeeps had not long been married to his first wife, Jean, but does not blame his touring for the fact that they eventually split up:

It wasn’t the tour or anything that happened on it; it was me. I did meet a girl after the first Test in 1955 and it was all perfectly innocent. She liked dancing and I liked dancing, but nothing else happened. And would you believe it—the first time I went into the Mayfair Hotel in London after being selected for England, there she was, working as a receptionist.

The Lions lost their opening match to Western Transvaal 6–9, before a run of ten victories and another loss to Eastern Province took them to the first Test in Johannesburg. Ernest Michie recalls that the Test side was decided pretty much in advance, but there was competition to be named as a reserve.

‘In those days you would be named as a reserve but would only play if a member of the Test team dropped out before the match, as there were still no substitutes or replacements allowed during the match,’ said Michie.

There were four second row forwards in the squad and one of them was the tour captain, so that meant there were three of us going for one place. I was named as first reserve but never got to play, and it was the closest I ever came to making the Test team.

In any case, I got to ‘play’ in one sense, because I had taken my bagpipes with me on the tour and I played the team onto the pitch for that first Test.

The match has gone down in history as one of the greatest internationals ever played. The Lions won 23–22 in front of a world-record crowd of 95,000, plus at least another 10,000 who got in by dubious means. Dickie Jeeps recalled how one stand was given over to black South Africans, and they roared their support for the men in red rather than green.

Jeeps explained: ‘Many of them had got in over some scaffolding and it was absolutely packed. I was told many years later that Nelson Mandela had been in among them. It was good to have their support.’

The manner of the victory was very pleasing, the Lions playing running rugby and coming from behind, while also playing the second half of the match with 14 men after Higgins retired injured. A brilliant try under the posts by Cliff Morgan saw the Lions forge ahead and further second-half tries by Jim Greenwood and O’Reilly put them 23–11 up, only for South Africa to draw within a point with a late try.

The Springboks goal kicker Jack van der Schyff stepped up to take the conversion which would decide the outcome: ‘I remember we were all standing under the posts,’ said Dickie Jeeps, ‘just watching and waiting, while Billy Williams stood there with his hands together saying, “the Lord will keep this out, the Lord will keep this out”’.

Divine judgement or not, the conversion was missed, and the Lions had won a Test in South Africa for only the third time in the 20th century.

Danie Craven was the dictatorial coach of the Springboks and his reaction was one of fury at his side’s complacency. He dropped five of the team including goal kicker Jack van der Schyff who had missed the late conversion—he never played for South Africa again. The Boks went all out for revenge and got it in some style, outclassing the Lions 25–9 in the second Test.

The third Test proved crucial to the success of the tour. Angus Cameron’s injured knee caused him to be left out and replaced by Doug Baker, while Clem Thomas came in for his Lions Test debut. Captain Robin Thompson also missed the match through injury. His place was taken by Irish giant Tom Reid, who formed a partnership with Rhys Williams that proved crucial on the day.

In his History, Thomas related a bizarre event in training before the vital Test: ‘Danie Craven, obsessed by the idea that the British press were spying on him, took his players off the field and, when they had gone, took them back again for a session under bright moonlight.’ The press dubbed it ‘the moonlight sonata’.

It did the Springboks no good. Inspired by new captain Morgan, in the heat of Pretoria, the Lions took on the South Africans up front and won the toughest exchanges of the tour. Rhys Williams and Reid dominated the line-out, and even though badly injured, Courtenay Meredith stayed on the field and contributed to the forwards’ dominance. Meredith’s tongue had been almost severed, but despite being in agony, he insisted on being stitched up to play on, and was later re-stitched in order to play in the final Test as well.

Bryn Meredith said: ‘The Springboks are always big and physical, but we decided to take them on up front that day. It was one of the hardest matches I’ve ever played, but we had a good pack and good backs and we were determined to win.’

Jeeps commented: ‘You had to put up with the hard tackles and the bad ones, but that was part of the game, and anyway, we were as hard as they were.’

The Lions had also decided to change tactics behind the scrum, kicking rather than running the ball, and as a result there were no fewer than 63 line-outs in the match. The switch worked, and though the victory was narrow at 9–6, it was nevertheless deserved, not least because Butterfield had scored the only try of the game. With Morgan in control of the match, even Danie Craven had to admit that his beloved Springboks had been second best on the day. According to Meredith there was ‘one hell of a party’ that night.

No matter what happened, the Lions could not lose the four-match series, but by then they were exhausted and injury-ridden. Cliff Morgan had picked up an ankle knock but such was his importance that he would have been selected with any injury short of an amputation. The position of the captain was less clear. Robin Thompson’s fitness after injury was under considerable debate, but the man himself maintained he was fit enough to play, and later described it as ‘just another Lions myth’ that he had forced his way back into the team.

Shortly before his death in 2003, Thompson nailed the ‘myth’, saying:

Before the final Test the selection team of manager Jack Siggins, vice-captain Angus Cameron, Cliff Morgan and myself sat down. I said that I was fit and would like to be included. There were no qualms, no raised eyebrows; the trio were in full agreement.

But after the game I got some very bad press. They said I had forced my way onto the team even though I was still carrying an injury. Where all that came from I just do not know.

It was no surprise when a fired-up South Africa hit the tired Lions with everything plus the kitchen sink in that final Test in Port Elizabeth. Tony O’Reilly broke his shoulder scoring the second of the Lions’ two tries—it was his 16th of the tour, a new Lions record—but these achievements were scant consolation as the Springboks ran in five tries of their own for a 22–9 victory that squared the series.

Only now has Ernest Michie revealed the ‘hex’ which may have afflicted the Lions that day:

Cliff Morgan was very superstitious, and with us having won the first Test after I’d piped them on, he didn’t want us to take the field without me playing the pipes. But I was rooming with Johnny Williams who was a bit of a prankster, and who couldn’t resist trying to have a go at playing my pipes, which were all set up and ready to go. Unfortunately he knocked the reed out of the chanter so I couldn’t play them and couldn’t lead out the team in the last Test. I remember Cliff Morgan moaning ‘we’ll lose, we’ll lose’.

The series may have ended in a draw, but it was a victory for the quality of the Lions in one respect. One South African commentator wrote that his country owed ‘a manifold debt to the British Isles rugby touring team. They have rescued our rugby from becoming a matter merely of boot and brawn.’

As they had done on arrival, the Lions serenaded the large crowd that turned out to witness their departure. They left for home as one of the most popular touring parties ever to visit South Africa, their stylish play having entertained more than 750,000 spectators at their 25 games. To their amazement, on arriving in London after stopping off to play and beat an East African XV in Nairobi, the Lions were given a heroes’ welcome. The players did not know that, back home, the press coverage had been devoured by the rugby community in Britain and Ireland, and that newsreels of their matches had been popular in the cinemas.

The 1955 Lions enjoyed varying degrees of success in their lives after the tour. Dickie Jeeps went on to make two more tours with the Lions and later became chairman of the Sports Council—as we will see in chapter ten.

Ernest Michie’s international career was cut short by the diktat of the Scottish Rugby Union. He returned from the tour to National Service and then got a job with the Forestry Commission in Nottingham. While there, Michie turned out for Leicester, but the SRU had taken drastic action to counteract Scotland’s poor form in the early 1950s and had insisted that only ‘home-based’ players or those playing for London Scottish would be considered for selection. Michie was summarily dropped—even selection for the Lions was no guarantee of success against the short-sighted-ness of the blazerati of those days. Michie went on to enjoy a long career in the Forestry Commission and he and his wife Sybil, a nurse he met before the 1955 tour and who waited patiently for him to return, now live in Inverness.

Rhys Williams beat Michie to that second row place in the 1955 Test side. He would tour again in 1959, and go on to become one of the most respected figures in the administration of Welsh rugby, as well as a top official in the principality’s educational sector. But his connection to South Africa, minted in 1955, cost him dear. He would have become president of the WRU had he not visited South Africa as part of its board’s centenary celebration in 1989. Instead, after controversy broke out about the visit, Williams resigned his national position. He died in 1993.

Tom Elliot and Hugh McLeod, of those great Borders rivals Gala and Hawick respectively, became lifelong friends. McLeod said ‘He was a great guy, even if he was a pailmerk’ (an affectionate derogatory name for a resident of Galashiels). They never made the Lions Test team together but starred for Scotland for several years, becoming famous for their pre-match wrestling ‘warm up’ routine. Elliot became one of Scotland’s most respected farmers, and was awarded an MBE for his services to the industry. He died in 1998, while Hugh McLeod still lives in Hawick and is a stalwart of the town’s club, where he was once president and for which he famously absented himself from his honeymoon to play for.

The Lions of 1955 have had diverse careers. Jim Greenwood captained Scotland to a revival in the late 1950s before becoming one of the most respected coaches in the northern hemisphere and passing on his expertise to several future Lions while working as a lecturer at Loughborough College. Frank Sykes, the England winger, emigrated to the USA where he had a long and distinguished career as a teacher, latterly at Cate School in California where he even managed to encourage pupils into the delights of rugby. He now lives in Washington State.

One Lion who caused great controversy was none other than the captain. Robin Thompson provoked anger and fierce debate when he signed in early 1956 for Warrington, where his brother was a doctor. As had happened with Lewis Jones in 1950, once again a Lion was ostracized from rugby union. Sadly for Thompson, his playing career was cut short by a bone disease at the age of just 25, and he also endured a heart attack in his early forties, followed by several more after that. Thompson nevertheless became a respected rugby pundit and was inducted into the Rugby Writers’ Hall of Fame shortly before he died in 2003.

Other 1955 Lions have had to endure dire ill-health in later life. Cliff Morgan enjoyed a stellar career in broadcasting and became one of the best-known voices on television and radio, most memorably being the commentator for the legendary Barbarians versus All Blacks match in Cardiff in 1973. Behind the scenes, Morgan became head of sport at the BBC, while his vocal talents were always in demand on radio. Most cruelly, when he was afflicted with cancer some years ago, his treatment required the removal of his larynx, and that wonderful voice has been silenced. Yet he still maintains his interest in sport and his former colleagues from his home on the Isle of Wight.

‘What has happened to Cliff has been terrible, simply awful, especially when you consider that speaking was his way of life,’ said Dickie Jeeps. ‘But he is still in touch with letters and cards, and they are always so well written.’

It is always tragic when a physically fit person succumbs to dementia, and that is what happened when Alzheimer’s Disease afflicted one of the most popular of the 1955 Lions. Former England scrum-half John Williams was diagnosed with the disease at the age of 68, and his family have suffered a nightmare ever since.

His wife Mary went public with the details in a very moving ‘first person’ article in the Daily Mail in an attempt to show how victims of Alzheimer’s are often misunderstood and mistreated. Mrs Williams, who herself has survived a double mastectomy for breast cancer, told how the man the 1955 Lions knew as fun-loving Johnny the prankster had become a violent, forgetful, moody individual who had regressed to childhood. He would hit her, and seconds later act as if nothing had happened. When her son from her first marriage, Jonathan, was killed in a motorcycle accident at the age of 41, Williams would try to understand but seemed incapable of sympathizing—a classic symptom of the disease. Eventually Mary could no longer care for him at home and he had to be hospitalized. She wrote:

It’s almost impossible to equate the ruggedly handsome, energetic sporting hero I fell in love with and the broken man who cannot even remember his own name. This kind, generous and good man is now held for his own safety in the secure unit of a hospital specializing in patients with mental illnesses.

My husband, who is now 76, is incontinent and unable to feed or wash himself. The dementia has made him so aggressive towards me and others that for months he was detained under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act—an extreme law giving doctors the authority to hold and treat a patient.

The Williams family also faced a long and heartbreaking fight to get his care paid for, as was his right under the National Health Service rules. The Lions Trust stepped in with a £10,000 donation to help pay for his care, but Mrs Williams faced losing her home until legal pressure and the Daily Mail