FERGUS SLATTERY RIP: Lions memories and touring Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa
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When you think back through your Lions career and you think of 74 in particular, is there one moment that stands out above all the rest?
No, I mean, winning two Lions tours in New Zealand in 71 and South Africa in 74, there's lots of moments. To win, as in 74, to win three of the four tests and draw, as we did, unfortunately, the fourth one, they were all great moments, each and every one of them. But thankfully, there are lots of moments. I think that's the great thing about it is that And the same thing in New Zealand. New Zealand was a lot more problematic for us. Won the first test, lost the second one, won the third one and then drew the fourth one. And thankfully it was a JPR drop goal that secured us that fourth test. So they're all great, great moments.
When we look at this tour, we hear how maybe Warren Gatland is in a way hamstrung by the schedule, even though it's a 10-game tour. But because the players are playing so much club rugby right now and that they're arriving so late into camp, when you hear talk like that and you think back to your tours in 71 and 74 and you're playing 23, 24 games and you're gone for three months at a time, do you laugh at it?
No, we were gone for three and three and a half months, and that's the reason why I stopped playing for the Lions, because I couldn't afford... You've got a job, you've got to work, you've got to get yourself going in this world. So I was very happy that I'd been fortunate to be on two winning Lions tours. So the challenge for all these guys is huge, and I think... The 10-match tour is semi-insane because they're playing, with the exception of the first game, the next nine were all sides that potentially, in theory, could beat the Lions.
What are Fergus Slattery's most memorable moments from his Lions career?
And to be under that sort of pressure twice a week, every week, bar the last week where they've got the little gap, I think that's a mistake. And I just don't think it's the right thing for the Lions to be doing. I know money is the major thing that determines what happens and why it happens. I still don't think it's practical or pragmatic. And it's one of the things, the other thing that the Lions have to do, and it takes a little bit of time to get it. And it happened to us in New Zealand and in South Africa. We played our first two games in Australia in 71. We lost our first game, which was thankfully against Queensland and not in New Zealand. But that was not a great start. And you go back to the 74, we played two matches.
I played in the second one. That was against Namibia, which was then South West Africa. And we struggled. We did win it, but we struggled against it. So you need a certain number of games because you're playing four countries. You're coming together as one. And no matter how cooperative and how much we're all singing off the same hymn sheet, it just does take time to get to know each other properly. And the only way to do that is to go out and play it and do it on the pitch. That just does take a few games, no matter what.
Maybe it's just with the passing of time and the short highlights clips we see of those tours but it seems after slow starts that almost the Lions ended up playing a barbarian style of rugby against some of the teams they would face and there was a real enjoyment to the style of rugby you played. Was that the case and do you feel when you watch this Lions team and the gruelling nature of the quality of the sides you're playing that that isn't there anymore?
I think the professional game is very, very different. Everything is very, very different. I just took one aspect, refereeing. The referee in our day was one person, whereas today it's 100% covered. The referee is able to do an awful lot more and there's a hell of a lot more control. And an awful lot of the nonsense that we had to put up with back in those days is gone now.
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