When Carwyn James went to work on the All Blacks 50 summers ago, his assembly of a series-winning machine included two components of enduring reliability.
The first triumphant tour, featuring a Welsh scrum-half and an English flanker on the blindside of the back row, set a template which has been followed, by accident or design, almost without fail during all five successful expeditions since New Zealand in 1971.
Only the names of those wearing the relevant numbers have changed, not the nationality. Even when Gareth Edwards found himself hamstrung during the early minutes of the opening T...