Brendan Gallagher talks to Colin Deans 30 years on from his big Lions let-down

Thirty years ago this week – April 16, 1986 – Colin Deans finally achieved his ambition of starting at hooker in a Lions “Test” and indeed captaining the team. It should have been the pinnacle of his career but at the time it felt like an all-time low, a tarnished honour, a token gesture.
Deans, skipper of Scotland's outstanding team in 1986, was the man selected to captain the 1986 British and Irish Lions against the Rest of the World XV at Cardiff Arms Park as part of the IRB's centenary celebrations, a fixture organised after the 1986 Lions tour of South Africa had been cancelled because of concerns over apartheid.
Technically the South African rugby authorities, under huge political pressure, had withdrawn their invitation to the Lions just before Christmas.
Setting aside the politics for a moment it was a crushing rugby moment for Deans and many others. But particularly Deans. Back in 1983 he was comfortably the best hooker in Britain and Ireland but suffered the frustration – and unfairness – of having to sit on the bench in all four Tests with tour captain Ciarin Fitzgerald starting all the Tests. Nor was there a single minute off the bench so he could at least point to a Lions Test cap. That's not how it worked in those days.
Three years later Deans was THE man, by a country mile, both as hooker and captain. The 1986 tour was going
to provide huge personal redemption one way or another and, given his top
of the ground style, the opportunity to produce a series of definitive performances against a team who were probably the world's best at the time. Happy days.
Instead he found himself leading the Lions out against the World XV at a half full Arm's Park on a spiteful Wednesday evening, the sort of stormy night when you fear for those at seas. Then came the rains and an absolutely sodden game in which both sides did their best to rise above the conditions before the Rest won 15-7. And that was the 1986 Lions. There have been no reunions, just constant nagging thoughts as to what might have been.
What rather added poignancy to the situation – or rubbed salt into the wounds depending on your viewpoint – is that seven or eight Kiwi members of that World XV squad were flying off to South Africa at the end of the week to participate in the Cavaliers tour which had been organised to fill the gaping hole left by the cancellation of the Lions tour. Ouch.
“The whole thing was bitter-sweet for me but, if I'm honest, mainly bitter,” recalls Deans 30 years on. “I was an extremely fortunate and blessed player who experienced many highs but to be named as the Lions captain for that '86 match, knowing we had been denied the chance of touring South Africa, was possibly the lowest point of my career. I became a pub quiz question. Which Scotsman captained the Lions without ever leaving the country?
“In those amateur days, and before the World Cup, a tour of South Africa and New Zealand was rugby's Everest and to have that plucked away from you when you are at the peak of your career is pretty tough to take no matter what the circumstances. It was disappointing to tour New Zealand in 1983 and not force my way into the Test team and I wanted to bounce back and finally become a Lions Test player in 1986. I was pretty fast across the ground so the prospect of playing on those South African tracks was pretty appealing.
“Trying to look on the positive I supposed being named as captain for the '86 Lions was a compliment of sorts. Willie John McBride had been the manager in 1983 when I couldn't force my way into the Test team and was still a selector in 1986 so at least I had convinced him finally. It was a crappy wet evening in Cardiff but on a very special ground. My mum and dad came down and it was only very occasionally that my mother would come and watch so it must have been a big occasion.
“When we gathered for that match in Cardiff, Clive Rowlands, the manager, made a point of emphasising that we were British Lions, this was a real match and honour. We had been selected on merit, it wasn't just an invitation team thrown together. We were presented with our Lions jerseys and blazers and ties and all that stuff.
“The record books seem to differ but it wasn't a Test match in my book. That can only be when you play another nation even though that was a mighty World XV we played. But the game is recorded as a Lions appearance in the Lions records and I was very pleased after the 1997 Lions tour, when they organised a celebratory dinner, to be included among all the surviving Lions Test captains invited to share the moment.
“Listen, we always knew the '86 tour was in doubt, of course we did, but it was still a blow when it happened. What I'm never quite sure of is whether the pressure came from Maggie Thatcher and the British Government or the South African end. We will probably never know although South Africa seemed happy enough to then welcome the New Zealand Cavaliers – the All Blacks in all but name – in our place.
“The whole thing became very political and also got mixed up with the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh which were apparently going to be boycotted by the African nations and others if we toured South Africa.”
It's interesting, if academic, to speculate how a 1986 Lions team might have fared against South Africa that year with a young crop of exciting players – particularly backs – coming to the fore around this time and the pressing need to hit back and restore some pride after the disastrous whitewash in New Zealand three years earlier. There was also the matter of a contentious 3-1 series defeat in 1980 which could just as easily have gone the other way.
Not that they got any chance to stretch their legs in the Cardiff monsoon but that Lions back division of Gavin Hastings, Trevor Ringland, Brendan Mullin, John Devereux, Rory Underwood, John Rutherford and Robert Jones had a nice look to it. Hastings and Devereux had made their international debuts that season. New Wales fly-half Jonathan Davies was unavailable for the Rest of the World XV game but would undoubtedly have come into the equation, while, if you were looking for an uncapped bolter, a mercurial young West Walian by the name of Ieuan Evans was beginning to pull up trees down at Llanelli.
Up front, the Lions looked pretty solid and Ian ‘the Bear' Milne would have certainly augmented the front-row that was on display that night in Cardiff. A fleet footed back-row of John Beattie, Nigel Carr and John Jeffrey looked well suited to South African conditions and Peter Winterbottom might well have been another considered for selection.
“Who knows how it would have gone because it was a very strong era for South Africa, as they showed by beating the Cavaliers 3-1.They had the likes of Naas Botha, Danny Gerber, Ray Mordt, Avril Williams, Errol Tobais and many other great players. But I reckon we could have caused some damage. We would have had a nice mix of experience and youth. It would have been a hell of series. As it happened although I played with many great Boks in my career I never got to play against them, let alone over there on their patch.
“Some of the lads got their shot at a Lions tour three years in Australia but I really for feel for somebody like Nigel Carr who was in the form of his life in 1986 just a year into his Test career. He would have been a handful for sure down in South Africa with his pace and athleticism and still around in 1989 I would have thought. He could have been a great Lion in 1986 but his career was ended when he picked up those horrible injuries in that bombing incident in 1987 when his car was blown up.
“Looking at that World XV brings back some good memories, though. I became friendly with Wayne Smith down the line when he was coaching at Northampton and I become good mates with their prop Topo Rodriguez who had just switched to Australia after starting life as a Pumas.
“In fact I'm still in regular contact with Topo. He is pushing the need for proper scrummaging reform with the IRB, sorry World Rugby. He wants to sort out some of the endless delays and nonsense we get and I'm part of a group of old front rowers who chip in with our thoughts to Topo via an email forum. Graham Price is involved as well and Tommy Lawton who also played that in that Cardiff game. We just try to pool some of our experience and thoughts and hopefully there will come a point when Topo can go to World Rugby with a master plan.
“Thinking back 30 years on now the whole irony of that Lions match in Cardiff and the Five Nations XV game we played against the Rest of the World a few days later at Twickenham was that at least half a dozen of the New Zealanders were flying straight down to the South Africa after the Twickenham game to join the Cavaliers. There was Wayne, Cowboy Shaw – what a player he was by the way – Murray Mexted, Gary Knight, Warwick Taylor, Andy Haden, Dave Loveridge.
“I remember having a coffee down in Cardiff the day before the match with their skipper Andy Dalton who I knew well – it was all very laid back that week even though he was the ‘oppostion'. He was pretty nervous and apprehensive about it and what the reception would be down in South Africa.
“I can understand that. I remember Scotland got invited at short notice to tour New Zealand in 1981 – a great little tour which did us a power of good as team – but I got the distinct impression we were also used as a dummy run for the security measures that were being put in place for the Springboks when they arrived. I'd never seen anything like it my life. Very intense and a little scary. It was a little taste of what was involved when you played South Africa back in this era.”
The Lions XV: G Hastings (Scotland); Ringland (Ireland), Mullin (Ireland), Devereux (Wales), Underwood (England); Rutherford (Scotland), Jones (Wales); Whitefoot (Wales), Deans (Scotland, capt), Fitzgerald (Ireland), Dooley (England), Lenihan (Ireland), Jeffrey (Scotland), Carr (Ireland), Beattie (Scotland)
Try: Beattie. Pen: Hastings
World XV: Blanco (France); Kirwan (New Zealand), Slack, Lynagh (both Australia), Esteve (France); Smith (New Zealand); Farr-Jones (Australia); Rodriguez (Argentina/Australia), Lawton (Australia), Knight (New Zealand), Cutler (Australia),  Burger (South Africa), Shaw (New Zealand), Poidevin (Australia), Mexted (New Zealand)
Tries: Farr-Jones, Poidevin. Cons: Lynagh (2). Pen: Lynagh
Referee: R Francis (New Zealand)