When someone with a grasp of rugby history comes to write an account of the great tours of recent memory, England’s tragi-comic slog around the southern hemisphere in 1998 is unlikely to feature.
Those of us who were there knew we were in for something unforgettably forgettable from the get-go, when poor Tony Diprose, lumbered with the dubious honour of leading a third-strength team in Brisbane, found himself being bushwhacked by an errant firework, a platoon of smart-arsed locals in loud shirts performing physical jerks directly in his face and a landslide of Wallaby tries.

For all that, it...