McGeechan inspired by old master

The Lions head coach is recreating the imaginative culture of Carwyn James after returning to the job following two losing tours. He tells Chris Hewett why his tactical team is ready to surprise the Springboks

(GETTY IMAGES)

The whole of the union game has been thinking of the late Carwyn James, patron saint of the Gwendraeth Valley, for two irresistible reasons. Last night, Llanelli Scarlets played their final game at Stradey Park, which the greatest of all coaches regarded as his holy of holies. Forty-eight hours before that emotionally charged occasion, another master of the rugby universe, Gerald Davies, unveiled the back-room team for next summer's British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa. If Carwyn's spirit filled the air at Stradey, his legacy will forever remain wrapped in the famous red shirt.

He coached the Lions only once, against the All Blacks in New Zealand in 1971, yet while his most revered successor, Ian McGeechan, has spent the last 30-odd years knocking him into a cocked hat on the statistical front – McGeechan had already undertaken two tours as a player, three as head coach and one as an assistant coach when Davies, a member of the victorious '71ers and current Lions manager, asked him to head up this latest venture into Springbok country – there is a sense that if the 2009 trip is a success, it will be because it recaptured something of the essence of Carwyn's triumph.

On the face of it, there are no comparisons to be drawn. In a brilliantly instructive little book called How we beat the All Blacks – the 1971 Lions speak, James wrote thus about his training regime: "We'd start off a session with a warm-up. We would run around, do a few press-ups, a few exercises to get the muscles working. We would have a bit of a chat. Then we'd do a few skills, introducing as many as possible while doing a combination of ball work and running. In the early days of the tour, training usually lasted for two hours. Eventually that was condensed to about an hour and a half. The New Zealanders felt it was all too gentle."

It conjures up a world of purest innocence when set alongside the minutely detailed assessments already being made of players in the running for the flight to Johannesburg in May. "Every individual will be profiled physically, mentally, tactically and technically," said the head of performance analysis, a 26-year-old masters graduate by the name of Rhys Long, this week. "And come match day in South Africa, we'll be using a technique known as 'accelerated adaptation'." Come again? "My job will be to analyse events as they unfold and get messages to the coaching team that will effectively allow them to think quicker than the opposition. It's about getting inside their decision-making cycle before they get inside ours." Of course. It seems so obvious.

But if the lyrically eloquent James might have struggled with Long's technobabble, McGeechan would have no trouble understanding, and identifying with, one of his predecessor's philosophical outpourings. "I remember well the day I met my '71 Lions for the first time," Carwyn remarked, years after the event. "The first thing I said to them was: 'Look here, be your own men. Express yourselves, not as you would at the office, but as you would at home. I don't want Irishmen to pretend to be English, or Englishmen to be Celts, or Scotsmen to be anything less than Scots. You each have an ultimate quality to give to the team and you must know that you are able to express yourself in your own special, unique way, both on the field and off it.'"

This is precisely the mood of commonality, underpinned by respect for the different rugby cultures brought together once every four years in the name of Lionhood, that McGeechan will attempt to recreate after the failures of the last two tours: the visit to Australia under Graham Henry in 2001 and the trek to New Zealand under Sir Clive Woodward in 2005. In Wallaby land, Henry ruthlessly cut the midweek "dirt-trackers" adrift in order to concentrate solely on the Test side and allowed the squad to become factionalised. As a consequence, an eminently winnable Test series was lost. Martin Johnson, who captained the party, describes it as the great regret of his playing career.

Against the All Blacks, coached by a chastened Henry as coincidence would have it, Woodward was routed as much by his own grandiosity as by his hosts, although the latter were in little need of the helping hand they received. Among his many miscalculations, rugby's most prominent knight of the realm split the coaching team in two, thereby marginalising half the hopelessly overpopulated party. There will be no such nonsense in South Africa. All the coaches will coach everyone, all the time.

"When I was interviewed for this position," McGeechan said this week, "I stated quite openly that if the Lions were not looking for someone to do the job in the way I felt very strongly that it should be done, I wouldn't be interested. I'm happy to say the tour management saw things as I saw them. I've been extremely careful in choosing this coaching team" – the forwards expert Warren Gatland, the defence strategist Shaun Edwards and the backs specialist Rob Howley, all of whom have close links with Wasps, where McGeechan is director of rugby – "because in the uniquely pressurised Lions environment, where the challenge is to achieve something extremely difficult in a very short space of time, trust is so important. I work closely with Shaun, I've worked with Rob and after talking matters through with Warren, it's clear to me that we think along similar lines.

"People might say there is a Club Wasps feel to this. Is that a bad thing? What we need is uniformity of thought and complete understanding. We won't always agree as a coaching team, but I know this much: we'll be honest with each other. If someone has a problem – and this goes for the players as well as the coaches – there must be no innuendos, no whispering, no hiding in corners. I want it out in the open like a shot. Only by being prepared to talk things through will we reach the answers we need."

McGeechan's record with the Lions is almost as good as the Lions' overall record is bad. As a player, he took part in Willie John McBride's unbeaten rampage through Springbok land in 1974 before being involved in the near miss against the All Blacks three years later. In 1989, he was the tactician behind the series victory in Australia and might, with the grace of God and one less blast of the referee's whistle, have emulated James by winning in New Zealand in 1993. Famously, he then guided the Lions to glory in South Africa on the great feel-good tour of 1997 – the fondest of rugby memories for everyone who experienced it.

"Yes, yes, but the fact remains," he said, "since the First World War the Lions have won four series out of 17. It's not too good a statistic, is it? But then, you have to take account of the scale of the challenge. In the old days, the touring teams had plenty of time to build a Test side but played their matches with referees from the host nation. Now, we have neutral referees but far less time to develop a unit capable of being competitive in the Test arena. When the Lions have been successful, the reasons have been the same: primarily, reasons of chemistry. That's the essential thing. With the Lions, chemistry matters every bit as much as talent."

For the coaching team, the work starts here: exhaustive checks on scores of potential tourists performing at international level, both in the autumn Tests and, from early February, in the Six Nations Championship; a careful assessment of fringe candidates as the club campaign moves towards its conclusion in the spring; and, crucially, the appointment of a captain. McGeechan, who had expected to be Wasps-bound during the international windows because of Edwards' commitments with Wales, will now watch much of the relevant action in person because the club have recruited Tony Hanks, who coaches the Waikato provincial side in New Zealand, in a caretaking role. Hanks flies to London at the start of next month.

"I can think of half a dozen candidates for the captaincy," said McGeechan, who pulled an unusually large rabbit out of the hat in '97 by choosing Johnson, who had never led a side at Test level, as his captain in South Africa. "As for the selection in general – well, the first 25 names will be easy. It's the last 10 or 12 who will be the most difficult to get right, and they will be the important ones, the ones who will probably make the difference. They may be regulars in their national teams, but by the same yardstick, they may not be playing international rugby at all. They will be people I feel can add value, perhaps in unexpected ways. With the Lions, you have to see things differently."

Carwyn, who saw everything differently to everyone else, would have agreed wholeheartedly.

Lions legends... and losers

Triumphs

*Carwyn James The only Lions coach to have achieved the ultimate: victory in New Zealand. A thinker who scared the living daylights out of the ultra-conservative Welsh Rugby Union of the 1970s, he died too young – unfulfilled, perhaps, but no less of a giant.

*Ian McGeechan The only man to guide the Lions to victory twice, the Scot may yet add another chapter to the success story. If James was a heroic figure, McGeechan's achievement as both a player and a coach is unparalleled.

*Syd Millar The only other man to coach the Lions to victory in the post-war era. Post-First World War, that is. Millar's side went unbeaten through South Africa in 1974.

Also-rans

*John Dawes There were high hopes for the Lions when they travelled to the land of the long white cloud in 1977, having won twice on the bounce. Dawes, the captain in 1971, had a terrible time of it as his team blew their opportunity against the All Blacks amid torrents of bad publicity.

*Graham Henry The first southern hemisphere coach of the north's most celebrated team, he had no grasp of the Lions ethic. Defeat in Australia in 2001 left a bitter taste.

*Sir Clive Woodward From appointing Alastair Campbell as his media manager to over-booking seats on the plane to New Zealand, the World Cup-winning Englishman (left) got too many things too badly wrong.