Bobby Windsor, the 1974 Lions hooker, gives his view from the heart of the pack
SOUTH AFRICA is a rugby country like no other. In 1974 we were hated on the field but loved off it. The welcome was a clenched fist on the one hand and back- slapping hospitality on the other. Wherever we went, we were front-page news.
We knew from the outset we had the forwards to win the series. We were able to exploit the fact the South Africans were dripping with gratitude because the Lions had gone ahead with the tour. We could kick and punch with abandon because no referee was going to send us off.
It has gone down in history as the “99” tour but, like most of the best stories, it is a myth. There had been a bit of nonsense in our early games; we had a squad of forwards who would not take any messing. One in, all in.
Someone asked Willie John McBride (the 1974 captain) about this at a press conference. He made a joke: “I just shout `99′ and everyone comes piling in.” Can you imagine it? Some guy has slugged you or booted a colleague in the head and there you are shouting “99”! First, you would never think to do so because you were piling in; second, no one would hear you anyway.
We did not have to wait for Willie John to start hollering in 1974. Most of the time we initiated the nonsense. It was psychological and it worked. We unnerved them. They knew it was coming but were not sure when.
Playing in a country like South Africa is always hard. You must never, ever lie down, otherwise you get used as a carpet. If only four or five forwards had been prepared to get stuck in we would have struggled, but everyone was involved. It was an instinctive thing, not premeditated.
Fran Cotton was the hardest of them all; he never took a step backwards and whenever Willie John had a problem that needed sorting he would approach Franny.
I remember in one of the Tests, the South African second-row John Williams was making a nuisance of himself at restarts. He was taking everything and we were in trouble.
Willie John asked Franny to sort him out. Talk about punching power – Williams took a trip to the next planet. But the South Africans are a proud lot. He was carried off spark out, yet it was reported the next day he had taken no further part in the match because he had trapped a nerve in his shoulder.
It was not a case of fighting back but fighting fire. We never lost a match that tour but came close at Orange Free State. We were trailing 9-7 with a minute to go when Willie John came in as we rolled a maul and belted their second-row back what seemed 25m. This guy did not know where he was, their maul disintegrated and we scored the winning try.
The first match we played in 1974 was Western Transvaal. They had this huge prop who looked 28 stone, massive. We could not shift him in the scrums and that worried us. The South Africans liked to have their flankers roaming free and our tactics were to force them to scrummage and give our backs space.
That meant taking their front five apart but this Western Transvaal prop would not budge, so I booted him. He did not flinch, smiled and shaped to punch me. I saw it coming and ducked but he caught Tommy David a beauty. Tom collapsed to the ground but quickly got up because there was no way you could show them you were hurt. He carried the shiner around with him for a few days afterwards.
Tom was involved in another incident a few weeks later, following a narrow victory against the Quaggas at Ellis Park. The crowd were not happy with the referee, who had been very fair, and came on to the field at the end of the game. They were going to lynch him and he had been punched to the ground when Tom stepped in, picked him up and led him to safety. I expected Danie Craven, the president of the South African Rugby Board, to apologise and grovel to the referee at the after-match banquet. But there was this ref with two black eyes, being told by Craven if he refereed like that he deserved everything he got. Not surprisingly, we did not come across him again.
I could understand it when the referee in our last Test disallowed a try which would have given us victory and a whitewash. It was a fair try, as he acknowledged afterwards. “Look, Bob,” he said to me, “it’s no problem for you, you’ll be back in Wales in a couple of days. I have to live here.”
He was right, but I would have stayed out there for three years rather than three months. It makes me laugh when players now complain that two months is too long a tour. In 1974, I was a steelworker put part-time because of the industrial problems in Britain. I hardly earned anything, but for three months I was treated like royalty: fillet steak, a flow of beer at weekends, five-star hotels and superb weather. I did not want the tour to end.
South Africa is the top rugby country and, while I can talk about the violence which was part of the game 20 years ago, neutral referees and all-seeing cameras have cleaned rugby up.
Of course I will be cheering the Lions on and I think a certain Welshman, Barry Williams, will do what I did in 1974: go out as a reserve hooker and return as the No. 1. The Lions are the fortunate few.
ENDS