This week the Rugby Club of Victoria hosted a fundraising dinner in the Olympic Room at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Among the evening’s highlights was a fascinating Q&A session featuring Martin Johnson and Alun Wyn Jones, both of whom have led Lions teams into series-defining games and know from personal experience just how swiftly a sure thing can disintegrate.
Johnson may have hoisted the Rugby World Cup in Australia in 2003 but the merest mention of the 2001 Lions tour, even two decades later, still prompts him to put his head in his hands. The Lions, as now, had won the opening Test with relative ease and were in front at half-time in Melbourne the following week. They felt firmly in control of the game and on the verge of sporting immortality.
