A busy and productive week at work but everything pales into insignificance after yesterday's Lions victory. For those of us into rugby union from the four home nations the Lions is the biggest thing barring the latter stages of a World Cup. It is a unique team bringing together four nations that are at each other's throats for the four years between tours (but for the education of footy fans, we still sit together, drink together, and wind each other up without resorting to violence). The tours are against the best three teams in the World, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand who each host the Lions every 12 years.
It's a big deal and the Lions rarely win a test series. Yesterday they won the series 2-1 with an emphatic and dominant performance against Australia. Some have questioned whether the Lions has a place in the professional era. Ask the players of both sides, the coaching staff, the many thousands of fans who paid a lot of money to travel to watch the games in the flesh, the millions who watched on TV - yesterday was a great day and it makes those Lions players legends regardless of which of the 4 nations they came from.
There are a few annoying things about it though with idiots voicing opinions such as "there's too many Welshmen in the squad", "Gatland is a Kiwi", etc. Well I'm English, if I was picking the squad there would have been a couple of more Englishmen, I would have played BOD at outside centre in the last test, I would have picked Croft and Tipuric instead of O'Brien and Lydiate and I was wrong on all counts. Outstanding performance by all - loved every minute even though I lost money (I had the Lions to win the test but by a lesser margin).
Warren Gatland showed what management is about, difficult decisions, no sentiment but based on fact and backing yourself. And boy did he get it right.
The vast majority of Lions fans had a great day yesterday and look forward to shortly being at each other throats again but with increased respect. And it's now time to stuff the Aussies at cricket!
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