OLLIE STILL FEELS PRIDE
FORMER Lions outhalf, Ollie Campbell, was like a kid in the run up to Christmas counting down the sleeps left before the 2017 tour started on Saturday morning.
The two-time tourist – a veteran of the 1980 and 1983 southern hemisphere adventures in South Africa and New Zealand – wasn’t short of invitations to undertake this latest rugby pilgrimage and be there in person.
His old friend Murray Mexted – whose international rugby academy has had a hand in the development of so many of the All Blacks that will be in Steve Hansen’s team on June 24 – had contacted him on numerous occasions to see could he convince his friend to visit.
There was even a request from another famed All Black, Michael Jones, someone whom Campbell has never even met before. The rag trade, though, is just too busy for the 1982 Triple Crown winning No 10 to drop everything and fly long haul, leaving him settling for TV home comforts in Dublin rather than have his beady eye on Johnny Sexton up close in Whangarei in the dark of a New Zealand winter’s night.
New Zealand rugby infatuates Campbell, his memory an encyclopaedia dating back 54 years to the afternoon when an incurable bug first bit.
‘The first international my dad brought me to was Ireland against Wilson Whineray’s All Blacks, December 7, 1963. I remember it as if it was yesterday, 6-5 the score, Don Clarke, full-back for New Zealand, wearing the No1. Full-backs in those days in New Zealand wore No1, the opposite way around.
‘He was the heaviest man at that time to play for New Zealand and there he was playing full-back and kicking the winning goal. That was probably the defining day of my life. From that day, I was just hooked on rugby, hooked on Ireland, hooked on the All Blacks.
‘I read everything I could get my hands on, particularly by Terry McLean, one of the doyens of New Zealand rugby writing. I read about tours, autobiographies, and 20 years later, there I am, on the Lions going to New Zealand. ‘It was Alice in Wonderland. Playing in these grounds, visiting all these places, from Eden Park to Athletic Park in Wellington, to Christchurch, Dunedin… the tour itself, in terms of the rugby we played, was disappointing. We were whitewashed in the Test series 0-4, but in every other way it was just an experience of a lifetime. ‘The ultimate is to play for the Lions and the ultimate tour is New Zealand. There is no escape from rugby, but I embraced that. Who wants to escape that? I wanted to embrace it and live it. It’s true what people say, there is no escape in New Zealand as every man, woman and child lives, breathes and eats the game there.’ Campbell’s tour effectively took place in a different lifetime, though. Current coach Warren Gatland has been at pains since arriving in New Zealand that his biggest challenge is to ensure harmony among his 41 players, to generate a unity that can carry them through the Test series.
Such are the advances in social media in making the world a very small place, any hint of rancour will be seized on immediately by prying eyes in contrast to 34 years ago when it wasn’t until he came home from an 18-match schedule – which took nine weeks to play – that Campbell realised the full extent of the divisive situation Lions skipper Ciaran Fitzgerald had to deal with.
The travelling English media were ridiculing the Irishman’s captaincy at every turn and if he had his time over, Campbell’s on-the-ground reaction would have been very different.
‘I’m not sure we were quite all aware how much the British media were on Ciaran’s back. It would have been a disappointment subsequently that the Irish players didn’t pipe up more openly and support him more.
‘It’s easy in hindsight. In those days, there were no mobile phones, no Twitter, no Facebook. You were a long way from home and you weren’t getting all the information. It was only really when you came back and maybe someone had kept a scrapbook that you saw the headlines. Out there you were in a bit of a cocoon. But, in retrospect, the team could have been more supportive of Ciaran.’
The friendships made have endured, a 30-year reunion being held four years ago in Portrush, Trevor Ringland and David Irwin its chief organisers.
‘We were like children again. It was like a conversation 30 years ago had been interrupted and just continued on. It was like we were 21 again. Once you have been on a Lions tour you are bonded for life. We could talk forever.’
Campbell is chuffed the Lions concept is alive and kicking, its survival threatened by the sport moving from amateur to professional in 1995. Winning in New Zealand, though, remains the Holy Grail, the lone 1971 Test series triumph an achievement that left an indelible mark on a then teenage mind.
‘I was still in school, would have been 16 or 17, setting the alarm at 3 o’clock in the morning, having a little radio under the bed covers, getting BBC, a very crackly BBC that you had to turn and change. You’d lose the reception and you’d have to move. Your imagination would just run and run listening.
‘That tour had a phenomenal influence. The out-half was Barry John. Some journalist once said that he was so elusive that if he ran through a field of daffodils no one would know. I’d those sorts of images.
‘After that tour, a book came out called The Lions Speak explaining how they beat the All Blacks. The article by Mike Gibson, a hero of mine, on out-half play was a work of art. I read that article every night before I played a game for the rest of my career and it finished with the fantastic line that rugby is like love, it’s a game of touch and of feel and of instinct. Those who play it will enjoy it most if they master the basic skills and give freedom to their instincts and freedom to their naturalness.’
Out-half will very much be a prominent talking point in the weeks ahead. Sexton, the latest successor to Campbell as Ireland and Lions 10, faces a huge battle to maintain the Test jersey successfully worn in 2013.