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Stroke the Lion it’ll be fine they said! Here’s @scottbaldwin2 petting a lion like it’s a pet cat! pic.twitter.com/Y95FObGeJ5
— Andy Goode (@AndyGoode10) September 29, 2017
What is it about rugby and the tour mentality? As Scott Baldwin counts his blessings – and his fingers – Graham Thomas suggests it’s time for a new approach to actually doing the job of being a rugby player.
At least Steve Tandy didn’t blame the lion.
“In fairness, it was nothing to do with the lion,” said the Ospreys coach after his hooker Scott Baldwin was bitten on the hand – a hand which he had opted to push through iron railings in order to pet the animal’s head.
Strictly speaking, it had a lot to do with the lion. It was the lion’s decision to bite the living Welsh flesh thrust in its direction, presumably on the basis that it must have looked a lot tastier than the cheap and rotting cuts of meat you would imagine are normally prodded in his direction.
But, no hard feelings from Tandy. It was a magnanimous offering delivered in the press conference. Be in no doubt, the lion was not to blame for acting like a lion, even though referees are sometimes at fault for behaving like referees.
At which point, Alun Wyn Jones – sitting alongside Tandy – looks like a man who doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or hit someone. He eventually settles for sweeping imaginary debris off the press conference table.
It was, said the coach, a “good environment”. Really, Steve? Was it really so good?
“Environment”. Modern coaches love that word. It’s right up in the coach-speak guff manual, alongside “culture” and “processes”. If any modern coach wants to sound particularly impressive and knowingly up-to-date, he tries to get all three in the same sentence.
But back to the “environment” of some shitty tourist trap, just outside Bloemfontein, with sad-eyed lions wandering around behind bars. What is it about rugby players that doing their job away from home has to be accompanied by a trip to whatever local operation has been set up to extract cash from visitors?
The Ospreys weren’t on tour. It wasn’t a six-week trip. They weren’t on some awful mind-numbing treadmill of matches and training and meetings. They had to play one game in South Africa and get home again.
You might have imagined that trying to prevent a fourth straight defeat – and ninth in 11 league matches – would have kept them busy enough.
Did anyone see Real Madrid or Juventus players putting on helmets and descending into Big Pit mining museum at Blaenafon the day before the Champions League final?
When Manchester United flew into Swansea last month, did they squeeze in a surfing lesson at Langland Bay, followed by a trip to the Mumbles Love Spoon Carving Gallery?
Or did they just check in to their hotel, win 4-0, and check out again?
So far this season, two teams from these shores have gone to South Africa to play the Cheetahs or the Southern Kings. One Wales international has had his hand bitten by a lion, an Ireland player was thrown off a flight for refusing to turn off his laptop, and two of Leinster’s New Zealanders got no further than Johannesburg Airport because they didn’t have the right visas.
“Professional” rugby? Do me a favour. Premier League football may be debating the rights and wrongs of Sergio Aguero’s fast turnaround trip to Amsterdam which has left him with broken ribs, but at least the Manchester City player could argue the costly mistake was made by a taxi driver – unlike Baldwin or Cian Healy, Isa Nacewa and Jamison Gibson-Park.
Should it not have occurred to Baldwin and whichever management staff were there, that an international hooker’s hand is a valuable piece of property? It’s hard to think of a touring concert pianist sticking his digits through the railings.
The Guinness Pro 14 has pretensions to be a global tournament. Plans are afoot to expand into North America and possibly even a team from Germany.
Perhaps the Ospreys management will soon be planning a squad itinerary that includes a trip to the Statue of Liberty, followed an eve-of-match night on Broadway, whilst even now some Bavarian bierkeller owner is checking the Pro 14 fixture list for 2019 and arranging extra staff.
The radical alternative for rugby is to accept that this is no longer 1974. Players are no longer amateurs, which gave the other “Lions” of yesteryear the perfect right to mix game reserves and boozy bar rooms with playing matches.
Every away fixture is not “boys on tour”. It’s a job. Just do it.