Many of the things that have passed into rugby history are welcome to stay there: no one blessed with a beating heart and a functioning conscience misses the rebel tours of apartheid South Africa or England’s nocturnal depravities in Queenstown or Pablo Matera’s social media adventures circa 2012.
At the same time, it is perfectly reasonable, not to say necessary, to mourn the demise and disappearance of things worthy of our undying regard. On the weekend of the first Lions Test against the Springboks, two of the lost treasures that spring immediately to mind are Newlands, the nerve-tingl...