Verbal jousting on British and Irish Lions tours is as much a part of the deal as the rugby itself – and the mind games started anew in recent days.
Wallaby coach Joe Schmidt (a Kiwi) on one side and Lions general manager of performance David Nucifora (an Australian) on the other. The psychological bunfights have begun.
Schmidt described Sione Tuipulotu (Melbourne-born) and Bundee Aki (Auckland-born) as the “southern hemisphere centre partnership” in the Lions’ opener against Argentina on Friday night. And they are. But was it an innocent remark or one with a bit of edge? Bet the house on the latter.
He would know well that this is a touchy subject for some in Lionsland, most notably the great Willie John McBride, who is not on board with so many ‘foreigners’ playing for the Lions. In the squad there are two South African-born players, three born in Australia and four born in New Zealand.
Nucifora had a little jibe of his own, all before the Lions plane took off for Perth. “I’m sure that lots of mind games will go on…” he told the Daily Telegraph, while mentioning the “mental spar” of Lions tours.
He called Schmidt a “deep thinker” which he is. “Sometimes, if you think too deeply you’ll confuse yourself,” he added. “So, hopefully he gets confused overthinking things.” Another grenade thrown.
It’s hard to pinpoint the precise moment when mind games began on Lions tours, but we have an impeccable witness in plumping for 1896 in South Africa.
England’s Walter Carey was on that tour. As well as being a rugby player he became the Bishop of Bloemfontein in later life, so if a man of the cloth says that the trash talking began in 1896 then who are we to argue?
Carey wrote about South African psychological tricks, one of which centred around a man they would play in upcoming games. Wrote Carey: “We were told that the great Jack Orr, supposed to be a regular man-killer, was waiting to put us all in the hospital.”
Shots fired, as we say these days. Orr got injured before he could annihilate anybody so, mercifully, nobody ended up in the emergency ward.
So this stuff, in many different forms, has been going on for 129 years. And here’s more of it.
