LONG READ 'Mind games, verbal volleys, loaded barbs, anger, aggression. All are key ingredients in Lions vs Wallabies Test series.'

Alice Springs, 30 June 2001. A tin shack with a cobweb-strewn TV teetering precariously atop a cabinet in the corner of the bar. A scruffy Welsh backpacker approaches the singlet-clad barman with an enquiry.

“Are you showing the Lions game?”

“Liiions mate? What’s that? You mean the Brisbane Lions?”

Admittedly, Alice Springs isn’t a reliable barometer for the rest of the country. The impossibly remote, dusty town in Australia’s red centre shuffles to the rhythm of its own beat. But given the hype surrounding that year’s British and Irish Lions tour, I was astonished to discover that not only were they not planning to show the first Test that night, but that they didn’t even know what it was.

Australia were the world champions, for crying out loud. That Wallabies vintage was overflowing with world class talent: Gregan, Larkham, Eales, Roff, Kefu. A generational team that was as tough and gnarly as it was dashing and inventive. For a rugby nut like me, they represented the gold standard. At that point in history, there had only been four World Cups, and they had won two of them. Surely the land down under was awash with patriotic, tub-thumping Wallabies fans?

The truth was, during my outback wanderings, I hadn’t met many. There were legions of AFL fans, each exhibiting an ardent devotion to their local side, and plenty obsessed with the 13-man code known simply as “league”.  Cricket was and remains a national obsession, and soccer had been steadily rising in popularity. Rugby union was definitely more of a niche pursuit.

After fiddling with the antennae for a few minutes the barman was able to tune into the coverage of the first Test, and over several ice-cold VBs, my mate Mark and I watched delightedly as Quinnell and co. romped to a comfortable 29-13 victory.

I say all this because it feeds into the ongoing narrative that Australia is the “easiest” place for the Lions to tour. Unlike New Zealand and South Africa, where the All Blacks and Springboks are worshipped with a religious zeal, and the atmosphere for touring sides can quickly become cloying and claustrophobic, in Australia, vast swathes of the population won’t have a clue – like my mate in Alice Springs – who the Lions are.

This year’s second Test is in Melbourne’s iconic – and massive – MCG, and I guarantee you it will be full to its 100,000 capacity.

But this fails to acknowledge just how obsessed the Aussies are with sport in general. Rugby union may only be – according to some estimations – the 10th most popular sport in the country, but there is enough sporting bandwidth down under to accommodate all of the codes as well as tennis, basketball and netball, all of which are flourishing. This year’s second Test is in Melbourne’s iconic – and massive – MCG, and I guarantee you it will be full to its 100,000 capacity. Compare that to the 1987 World Cup semi-final when Australia struggled to fill Sydney’s 18,000-capacity Concorde Oval.

Twelve years on from my travels, I covered the 2013 British and Irish Lions tour for the BBC and encountered a similar degree of antipathy among the locals. Only on the last day of the series, which had gone down to a Sydney decider, did the Lions knock the rest of the sport off the back pages. The Lions won that Test convincingly, destroying the Wallabies during a second-half blitz that culminated with Jamie Roberts carving his way through a beleaguered Australian defence, and carving the Lions into history – the only touring side to win a Test series this century. Lions tours, regardless of the destination, are fiendishly hard to win.

History appears to be repeating itself with regard to the narrative. The Lions are bookies’ favourites. This Wallabies vintage is nowhere near as mature as previous ones. A light, zesty Crianza as opposed to the deep, dark Gran Reserva of 2001. They have a negative win record under Joe Schmidt, but looks can be deceiving. Lions fans could be left with a bitter backwash if they don’t pay close attention to the tasting notes.

Joe Schmidt is a masterful coach. Leinster have provided a record 12 players to this Lions squad and he knows most of them intimately. He was Andy Farrell’s mentor during his hugely successful reign as Ireland head coach and knows how Farrell’s brain is wired. He was also part of New Zealand’s coaching ticket when they cannily altered their defensive strategy to nullify Ireland’s attack during the 2023 World Cup quarter-final.

His presence will have an enormous impact on the outcome of this series. As much as Schmidt likes to project an avuncular demeanour, beneath the surface lies a ruthless perfectionist who’ll leave no stone unturned in pursuit of victory. The rabble that Eddie Jones led to a humiliating 40-6 World Cup defeat by Wales have been transformed into a seriously competitive outfit unafraid to express themselves. They’re scoring more freely, defending more stoutly, and executing with a much higher degree of skill and precision.

The Wallabies’ instinct for flair masks a ruthless streak, and violence often lurks beneath the surface.

Revenge was served cold to Wales in the autumn with a 50-point hammering in Cardiff, a week after silencing the Twickenham hordes in West London. Defeat to Scotland and a narrow loss to Ireland poured cold water on talk of a first overseas ‘Grand Slam’ since 1984. Nevertheless, a line had been drawn in the sand. Memories of that 67-27 shellacking at the hands of the Pumas in Santa Fe have firmly receded in the rear-view mirror.

Some of those same Pumas gave the Lions a bloody nose in Dublin on Friday night, defying the odds to condemn the Lions to their first opening-day defeat in 54 years. For context, they’ve never started a tour against a Test side ranked fifth in the world, and they were without many of their best players, but the defeat will have swelled optimism in Australian ranks. There were frailties that can be exploited, and the normally composed Farrell was noticeably irked by the sloppiness of the performance.

The reliably outspoken David Campese has already declared that the Lions will be “toast” down under, and predicted a 3-0 series victory for the Wallabies.

It’s classic Campo, but there will plenty of Australian fans who’ll be thinking the same. They don’t do introspection. They’re a nation brimming with confidence and there’s no-one they like to beat more than “the Poms”. And to those who say they’re a little soft, that they lack the snarl of an All Black or the brutality of a Springbok, you take that with a pinch of salt too. Sam Warburton, that Lions colossus who captained two tours and never lost a series, once claimed that the most physically imposing opponent he ever faced wasn’t Richie McCaw or Pieter-Steph du Toit, but David Pocock.

The Wallabies’ instinct for flair masks a ruthless streak, and violence often lurks beneath the surface. From Nick Farr-Jones’ swinging fists in 1989, to Duncan McCrae’s savage assault on Ronan O’Gara in 2001, to James Horwill’s reckless stamp on Alun Wyn Jones in 2013, these series rarely unfold without controversy.

After Rob Norster unleashed a flurry of punches on whoever was within range, captain Finlay Calder summoned his troops into a huddle and declared, with trademark brevity, ‘nothing like that is going to happen to any of us again.’

During the 1989 tour, the Australian Rugby Union sent a strongly-worded letter to the committee of the four Home Unions to complain about the Lions’ on-field conduct. The Lions pack – led largely by a bunch of rugged, no-nonsense Englishmen – had been throwing their weight around and the Aussies didn’t like it. Head coach Ian McGeechan had to lean into his diplomatic skills to calm the situation.

Ironically it had been the Australians’ recklessness in some of the warm-up games that had provoked the Lions into their own brand of get-your-retaliation-in-first. In a fiery game against Queensland, Mike Hall had been turned into a human colander when the entire home pack trampled over him at the bottom of a ruck. After his Cardiff and Wales team-mate Rob Norster had unleashed a flurry of punches on whoever was within range, captain Finlay Calder summoned his troops into a huddle and declared, with trademark brevity, ‘nothing like that is going to happen to any of us again’.

That brothers-in-arms approach led ultimately to the Battle of Ballymore in the ill-tempered second Test. Diminutive scrum-half Rob Jones was the unlikely antagonist, stamping on Farr-Jones’ foot at a scrum, safe in the knowledge that his enforcers – Wade Dooley, Paul Ackford, Mike Teague and Dean Richards – would step in to finish the job. A furious brawl ensued, with a number of angry Lions throwing wild flailing haymakers. The irony that three of the four so-called enforcers were policemen back home was not lost on the Aussies.

With the series levelled, it came down to the decisive third Test, and a howler of a mistake by our man Campese, who gifted Ieuan Evans the easiest try he ever scored, and handed the Lions the series victory.

Twelve years is a long time to wait for revenge, and when the Lions returned to Australia in 2001, it was to face the reigning world champions. But the squad the Lions had assembled was a match for anybody and considered by many to be the strongest ever to have left British shores. Among the grizzled veterans like Martin Johnson, Jason Leonard and Keith Wood, there shone a few rough diamonds. League convert Jason Robinson and Brian O’Driscoll were among those with rising reputations.

That first Test victory at the Gabba proved the high point, as the Wallabies galvanised themselves to win the remaining two, sealing victory in the decider courtesy of a stolen lineout by Justin Harrison – a man derided in a newspaper column by Healey as a “plank” and a “plod.

Much like 1989, the build-up to the Test series saw an eruption of violence, culminating in the aforementioned assault on O’Gara by a frenzied, borderline-psychopathic McCrae during the match against the Waratahs. He was sent off and subsequently banned, reportedly refusing to apologise to O’Gara during the disciplinary hearing. In addition to his red card, five other players saw yellow that night, with ‘Tahs captain Phil Waugh suggesting provocatively that a few Lions players would be “feeling a bit sore” the next day.

O’Driscoll helped lighten the mood during the aftermath when he took umbrage at Austin Healey taunting O’Gara over his apparent submissiveness. The notoriously antagonistic Healey tried to goad O’Gara into a boxing match, and when the chastened Irishman told him to piss off, O’Driscoll stepped in to defend his honour. He donned a pair of boxing gloves and proceeded to – in the words of  Keith Wood – “beat the living crap” out of Healey. When someone with as decorated a career as Wood admits it was one of his favourite Lions memories, you know it would have been worth watching.

All of which brings us back to that tin shack in the windblown Australian outback. That first Test victory at the Gabba proved the high point, as the Wallabies galvanised themselves to win the remaining two, sealing victory in the decider courtesy of a stolen lineout by Justin Harrison – a man derided in a newspaper column by Healey as a “plank” and a “plod”.

Mind games, verbal volleys, loaded barbs, anger, aggression and a good old-fashioned bit of pom-baiting. All of these are key ingredients in Lions-Wallabies Test series. Just as 2001 was a compelling, nail-biting piece of theatre in which momentum swung back and forth, so too was 2013. The first two Tests were decided, ultimately, by missed kicks. It wasn’t until the second half of the third, when the Lions put their foot to the flailing Wallaby throat, that the outcome was secured.

First tension, and then release. Expect plenty more of the same in what could turn out to be a vintage summer for the sport. And if you’re a penny-pinching backpacker (as I was in 2001) and you’re offered a ticket for the decider, don’t turn it down on the basis it would amount to a week’s accommodation in an insalubrious Kings Cross hostel. Just take it. You won’t regret it.