They were speaking hours apart and from different ends of the world but a few things united Maro Itoje in Sydney, New South Wales and Willie John McBride in Ballyclare, Antrim – both were/are locks and, as of last Saturday, both know how it feels to captain the Lions to a series win.
McBride, 85 years young and leader of the immortals of 1974 in South Africa, is the oldest surviving victorious Lions captain.
That merry band numbered just four before the weekend – Finlay Calder (1989 in Australia), Martin Johnson (1997 in South Africa) and Sam Warburton (2013 in Australia) being the others. Now there are five.
“What message would I send to Maro?” says McBride. “I’d say well done, son. Well done. It’s never easy to win a series in the southern hemisphere and they’ve achieved it.
“I watched it at home on Saturday morning. I couldn’t be doing with listening to all the rubbish down the club, all the experts giving their opinions.
“The game was tremendous. The best I’ve seen in a very long time. There’s lots about modern rugby that I don’t understand. I don’t understand line-outs any more. I haven’t a clue why they bother having scrums because nobody knows what’s going on.
“We had 32 players, a coach and a manager when I was captain. They have more than 32 people in the backroom staff now. We had 22 matches. Everything is different, but I’d imagine something that hasn’t changed much is the feeling of having won.
“It’s the biggest honour you can have in rugby – winning a series with the Lions.”
‘An honour to join such esteemed company’
Generations divide them but in their own way they are deeply fascinating men with stories that transcend rugby. McBride played through The Troubles, an Ulster protestant and an Irish captain who used rugby to try to build bridges between two warring communities while others were trying to blow them up.
The admiration for Itoje comes in a different form – in his work in giving severely disadvantaged kids from Nigeria, the land of his parents’ birth, a proper education. Through his Pearl Fund, he is making a difference in the lives of orphaned, fatherless and poverty-stricken young people.
McBride doesn’t understand the game Itoje plays, but he knew how he would have felt on Saturday night. “I’m very grateful and it’s obviously a tremendous honour to be in such esteemed company,” says Itoje when asked about the select band of captains he’s now joined.
“When I’m old and grey these occasions and these tours are going to be the experiences I look back on with extreme fondness.
“I would be surprised if you can find a British and Irish rugby player who says they don’t want to be a Lion. It’s something that each player holds dear to their heart. This is something the players want and the players will continue to want for decades and for as long as rugby is being played.
“You don’t have many shots at it. The next tour is never guaranteed. There’s a rarity to it. If you miss one, you may never have another opportunity.
“It’s been said before but in many ways, it shouldn’t really work. You have four different nations, four different ideologies, several different ways of how to play the game and how to think.
“It is not a homogenous group at all, but people buy in and you forge great relationships and you build bonds. That’s what makes it special.”
Itoje is one of the greats now. He has played in eight straight Lions Tests (seven as a starter) and that will become nine on Saturday when the Lions face the Wallabies in the last dance in Sydney.
His captaincy is low-key, almost gentle. When he wants some fire and brimstone in the dressing room he tends to call on others to deliver it. He once described himself as “deeply thoughtful, prone to overthinking, actually” – but that’s part of what makes him interesting.
He’s a rugby player but also a Christian, a collector of African art – “it speaks to my soul” – a philanthropist, a strong voice on anti-racism – “it has happened so often in my life” – and a lover of politics. When asked what was the coolest message he’s received since wrapping up the series last weekend, he says it was from foreign secretary David Lammy.
Itoje is also in the pantheon – a lock who wreaks havoc with his power, his nous and his strategic brilliance. His durability is astounding. He’s played every minute of every Six Nations game going back six years.
In 37 of his past 38 games for England and the Lions he’s gone the distance. Softly spoken, he’s as hard as they come. A player who came to rugby late and to captaincy later still, but who’s left his mark on the game and with years on his side – he’s only 30 – to make that mark even bigger.
What will he remember of this trip – the rugby or the people? “It’s hard to differentiate it. Ultimately, it’s going to be the people but the rugby makes it sweeter,” says Itoje.
“There is a verse that I can’t quite remember what book it is from in the Bible [Mark 8:36], but it says ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?’ If we won every game and we absolutely hated one another – I think life is more than that.”-BBC
