The 1993 British Lions tour to New Zealand, the first for a decade, the last by players who were still officially amateur and the first since 1908 with only three Tests rather than four, comes into the category of 'missed opportunities'. Coach Ian McGeechan, given the responsibility again as a reward for the success of his 1989 team in Australia, wrote a book about the tour called 'So Close to Glory', although Lions historian Clem Thomas argued that it might equally have been named 'Same Old Story'.
Like the squad who visited Australia four years earlier they went into the final Test with a chance to win the series. That position was built on one of the great Lions performances in the second Test at Wellington, when they demolished the All Blacks 20-7, a victory rivalled only by the 13-3 thumping administered in the third Test in 1971 and the three tries to nil victory, albeit in a dead rubber, in the final Test in 1959.
Yet it can also be argued, and was by Test hooker Brian Moore, that this single performance is all that stood between the 1993 team and being regarded as one of the great Lions debacles. This was also the tour in which the midweek team descended into near-chaos, culminating in a final week 38-10 battering by Waikato. Little wonder that McGeechan's tour report, building on memories of the very different midweek team marshalled by Donal Lenihan in 1989, argued that future selections should include a player of strong character picked to lead the dirt-trackers and give them a sense of identity.
This was an era of English dominance. They had contributed the bulk of the successful 1989 Test team and in the interim won 13 out of 16 Five Nations matches, including Grand Slams in 1991 and 1992. The picture in 1993 was rather clouded by their worst championship performance of the decade, with defeats in Cardiff and Dublin - the latter a 17-3 mullering immediately before the tour party was named - leaving them tied in mid-table with Scotland and Ireland.
The Dublin thumping may well have decided what was always going to be a tight call for the captaincy, with Scotland full-back Gavin Hastings - touring for the second time alongside brother Scott, a centre and with England's Underwoods providing, uniquely, a second on-tour brotherhood - getting the call over England centre Will Carling. But England still accounted for 16 of the 30 initial selections.
Their hosts were in a period of transition. The great team of 1987 was mostly gone but the newcomers who would illuminate the game from 1995 onwards yet to arrive. Wales winger Ieuan Evans has written that "if ever there a New Zealand team was there to be beaten, it was this one".
Impressions of the tourists' strength were reinforced by a devastating attacking display against the Maoris, hitting back from a 20-point deficit to win 24-20 with the decisive try coming from Evans. For 25 minutes, the Wales captain recalled, "we played a brand of rugby which no team in New Zealand could have lived with".
"Fixated on the Test series, they had allowed the midweek team to drift to the point at which, as Hastings admitted "At the end of the tour, there were two distinct parties"." Future Lions tours would learn lessons from the 1993 crop
The Lions won their first four matches. Lock Wade Dooley had to go home after his father died, but was replaced by another formidable Englishman, the young Leicester lock Martin Johnson. But match five against Otago saw the Lions' perennial persecutors -- who have a better record against them than any other non-test opponent -- record a 37-24 win. The Lions management were, Daily Mail writer Peter Jackson recorded, "obsessed with a belief that they would win the series through forward domination" and less was seen thereafter of the attacking pyrotechnics which had seen off the Maoris.
The first Test was fiercely fought and decided by refereeing decisions against the Lions. In the first minute Evans battled for the ball with All Black centre Frank Bunce. Evans recalled that "I still had both hands on the ball". But Bunce was awarded the try, as he had been in his earlier incarnation as a West Samoan in the World Cup against Wales in 1987 when Robert Jones had similarly just beaten him to it.
But the Lions fought back, steadily adding to their tally as the under-pressure All Blacks conceded penalties and Hastings kicked them -- six times in all to give them an 18-17 lead into the final minute. Then Australian referee Brian Kinsey awarded the All Blacks a highly contentious penalty. Grant Fox rarely missed, and did not do so on this occasion, landing his fifth penalty of the afternoon to give the All Blacks a 20-18 win.
There were two more defeats, against Auckland and Hawke's Bay, before the second Test. The Hawke's Bay match, lost 29-17, showed the mounting problems with the midweek team. Scrum-half Robert Jones, a hero of 1989 confined to the dirk-trackers by the excellent form of Dewi Morris, recalled the tour as one on which there was a feeling of 'us and them' from early on -- although the incident in which exuberant midweek team open side Richard Webster came within inches of shooting Test incumbent Peter Winterbottom in the foot during a clay pigeon session was an accident. The midweek team, Jones said, "had no real identity and it effectively fell apart as the tour went on". Most criticisms focussed on a group of Scottish forwards, but Jones felt this was unfair to hooker Kenny Milne and prop Paul Burnell.
Both had played in the first test team which came so close but were victims of the restructuring which took place before the second Test at Wellington. The outcome was a line-up in which skipper Hastings was the only Scot, Evans and centre Scott Gibbs -- who had displaced Carling -- represented Wales and Irish prop Nick Popplewell packed down along with seven Englishmen, including newcomer Johnson and Jason Leonard, who had switched from loose to tight-head. The 11 Englishmen were the most fielded from one nation in a representative Lions team.
The new line-up produced what Moore, who had displaced Milne, rightly described as "one of the great one-off performances in Lions history". Martin Bayfield dominated the line-out, Ben Clarke and Winterbottom controlled the breakdown and scrum-half Morris, in spite of smashing a knuckle in the first minute, played the game of his life. Moore recalled that "We shut them out in the line-out...we drove them in the loose, we tackled superbly. It was also a massive psychological boost for us that we scrummaged well."
The decisive moment came in the second half. Fitzpatrick, who admitted to having one of the worst of his 92 All Black Tests, knocked on, Morris swept up and found Jeremy Guscott who drew All Black wing John Kirwan to send Rory Underwood on a 50-metre charge to the line. The stranglehold was not relaxed for a moment, Hastings landed four penalties, outside-half Rob Andrew dropped a goal and the Lions won 20-7 in a manner which made them clear favourites for the following week's decider in Auckland.
But they failed to follow through. The period between the final two Tests saw the midweek team reach a fresh low against Waikato and the Lions selectors settle on more of the same for the final test. The All Blacks, as Moore recalled, did not: "They analysed their failure at Wellington to set their goals for the decider. That kind of analysis and improvement is one of the massive strengths of All Blacks rugby."
Former Test lock Andy Haden joined their party to advise on line-out tactics. The All Blacks replaced the massive Mark Cooksley with the agile Ian Jones at lock and brought in the powerfully direct Arran Pene for Zinzan Brooke at No.8. They avoided kicking to touch to limit the number of lines-out, and when they happened, crowded Bayfield.
The Lions led 10-0 early when Gibbs scored, but were unable to consolidate their lead. As McGeechan recorded the All Blacks run amok: "We simply could not match their onslaughts, and we spent the game playing catch-up rugby. It was a very disappointing result for over the series we probably had the better of them." The All Blacks won 30-13 with tries from scrum-half Jon Preston, Fitzpatrick and Bunce plus 15 points from the boot of Fox. Hastings' eight points gave him a series total of 38 and a career mark of 66, both Lions records.
So near...and yet. The Lions management did not escape criticism. Fixated on the Test series, they had allowed the midweek team to drift to the point at which, as Hastings admitted "At the end of the tour, there were two distinct parties".
And, in trying to dominate the All Blacks up front they failed to recognise that there might be more than one way to beat them. Ieuan Evans comment that "we took the negative option when we had all the material to take some calculated risks" might be seen as the special pleading of an outside back were it not for Moore's admission, after pushing for conservative tactics, that "I was probably wrong to be so cautious and realised so at the end of the tour". He had, he suspected "the natural caution of an English forward", and it was a critique which was applied during the same era to an England team which steamrollered all European opposition but tended to come up short against the southern hemisphere. And so a rare opportunity came, and was lost.