British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand

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Well, now that the tour is over ..... I thought it was one of the very best Lions tours that I have seen over the past 30 years.

Somehow, yet again, the tour rose above the usual small minded pariochalism, the worst efforts of the home Unions and administrators, the bile and stupidity of the UK and NZ media.

The Lions, a scratch team with almost no time for preparation or training together, went into the homelands of indisputably the best team in the world, a fearsome All Black unit who have swept everything in front of them away. Into a country that genuinely eats, sleeps and dreams about rugby. They were competitive and well coached, and I think the drawn series may well have been the very best series result by any Lions team in history.

Conversely, a young New Zealand side, pretty hard hit by injuries, were on balance the superior side to a rich and well supported foreign team that had been drawn from a population of about 90 million people! They were playing against one of the strongest Lions squads ever assembled.

The Lions fans were great, loud and passionate without generally being obnoxious, superb supporters for the team. The New Zealand fans and public are probably the most knowledgeable rugby people on earth, and the welcome they provided - plus the mutual respect shown by both sets of supporters was brilliant.

The super high quality of the midweek and warm up games helped the Lions team get better. What great depth the New Zealand game has and fair play for not stripping the franschises of their best players, like the Aussies did last time.

On the pitch, I thought New Zealand were marginally the superior team. Their attacking play and speed was incredible. They led for all but three minutes of all three tests and I think they might feel aggrieved about some of the ref decisions. However, the defence and tenacity of the Lions was great, and they played some good attacking rugby too ..... THAT try will go down in history as one of the great Lions tries. However, they All Blacks were genuinely thrown by the ferocity of the defence and the Lions kickers were head and shoulders above poor old Barrett. The way they reacted to the defeat and draw was very classy (I always say that if you feel cheated by a ref decision, the game was too close for you to claim unfairness. A great team would be far enough ahead that a poor decision wouldn't make a difference).

For the record, I thought Sonny Bill deserved a red card, I though Vunipola was skating on thin ice, and I also thought the 'accidental offside' should have been a penalty. Still, that's the way it goes.

Roll on South Africa. What a shame it's 12 more years until we go back to New Zealand!