Once Were Lions: The Players’ Stories: Inside the World’s Most Famous Rugby Team

I was a schoolmaster at the time and how else was I ever going to go abroad to play rugby? So when I heard I was selected I was always going to go and that was that, even though I was just married at the time, and my wife Betty had to go and live with her parents while I was away. It can’t have been too bad for her—we’re still together all these years later.

The result of the age limit was that young stars emerged and made themselves famous on that tour, with the two best known being Cliff Morgan of Wales and Tony O’Reilly of Ireland. The former would become a much-loved broadcaster and senior figure in the BBC, while the latter, who celebrated his 19th birthday on the tour, became a very wealthy businessman and owner of newspapers, who organized, and paid for, reunions of the Lions from his era. The exploits of the handsome and witty O’Reilly as a Lion and afterwards in business could fill a book by themselves, and Bryn Meredith credits the Irishman with helping to maintain the strong squad atmosphere that persists among the surviving 1955 Lions: ‘He is the one that has kept us together, organizing the reunions and taking us to see the 2007 World Cup Final. I don’t think the modern professionals will be doing that sort of thing in years to come—these days they want paid for crossing the road.’

O’Reilly may have been the individual star, but on that 1955 tour the dominant figure was Cliff Morgan, who led by example and brought his keen intelligence to bear on tactics. Dickie Jeeps, one of the great characters of rugby union for nearly 60 years, recalled that he got his place in the Test team, despite being second or third choice scrum-half, because Morgan wanted him alongside:

I hadn’t even played for England by then, but Cliff was a great player and fortunately for me he liked the way I played, passing the ball to the front of him so he could run on to it.

It meant that Trevor Lloyd rarely got a game, and I was so concerned for him that I went to see Jack Siggins to ask that Trevor should play. He just growled ‘I manage this team, not you,’ so it was hard for Trevor as he only played in about five games.

Morgan, the excellent English centre Jeff Butterfield, and O’Reilly were the fulcrum of a superb set of backs whose dashing play impressed their hosts throughout the almost four-month-long tour. Morgan repeatedly gave committed displays of controlling rugby in the No. 10 jersey, while O’Reilly dazzled on the wing or at centre, where he played in the final Test, with the flying Welsh sprinter Gareth Griffiths—a replacement for the injured Arthur Smith—and Cecil Pedlow sharing the wing duties as necessary.

Butterfield had an important role to play on the tour. Jeeps recalled:

Danny Davies from Cardiff was the assistant manager, but he was a quiet man, shall we say. Jeff Butterfield was a fitness fanatic, and he used to take the training and I can tell you, we trained harder on that tour than any other.

We were pretty fit anyway, though I remember my father, who had fought in the First World War and been wounded, telling me when I was first selected for England that he was still faster than me. So we had a race—and he won!

The forwards were more than useful, and for all four Tests the Lions had the same men in jersey numbers 1 to 3, with Bryn Meredith flanked by Swansea’s Billy Williams and Neath’s Courtenay Meredith making up an all-Welsh front row—the only tour since the war where one country has supplied the hooker and both props for all the Tests. Fellow Welshman Rhys Williams and captain Thompson usually provided the boiler room, with Scotland’s Jim Greenwood the only ever-present flanker in the Tests.

Hugh McLeod was a tough prop forward from the Borders who might well have made the Test team and indeed would do so in 1959, but he lost out in 1955.

‘I had no difficulty accepting the manager’s decision to select the Welsh guys in front of me,’ said McLeod.

I had just completed my national service—indeed I got away five weeks early so I could join the tour—and in the army you learn that orders is orders, and there was no arguing once the decision had been made.

The fact is that I felt lucky to be on the tour at all. If it had not been for my mother and my future wife I wouldn’t have been able to go on the tour because it was a rule that you had to have £40 in your wallet and that was a lot of money in those days. You also had to supply all your own gear except for a tie, and it was thanks to them that I was able to go.

McLeod did acquire something on tour—a nickname: ‘That fellow O’Reilly was awful quick with the gab, and the first time he saw me I was wearing my tracksuit with the legs rolled up about my knees. “Look,” O’Reilly said, “it’s an abbot”, and the name stuck from then on.’

There were plenty of colourful figures on the tour, not the least of whom was an ordained army chaplain, the Rev. Robin Roe of Lansdowne, London Irish and Ireland, who would go on to win the Military Cross for his bravery while serving with the Lancashire Regiment in Aden in 1967, when he rescued soldiers from a blazing lorry under heavy gunfire. The medal citation read: ‘His courage and example in the face of danger has been outstanding and his infectious enthusiasm and confidence under all conditions has been an inspiration to the whole Battalion.’ A Lion even when he was wearing a dog collar—what manner of men were these?

Of them all, the Rev. Roe had perhaps the most misgivings about touring a land already disfigured by the apartheid policy of the ruling National Party with its Afrikaaner majority. Most of the Lions were not in the slightest politically minded, but a few such as Roe were troubled by what they were going to encounter. Yet he and the others decided to go, if only to see for themselves what the morally repugnant system was like.

Meredith said:

We didn’t know what apartheid meant, but you soon realized that it meant that blacks went one way and whites another, and that there was demarcation everywhere. It didn’t affect us much because we only met the people that wanted to meet us anyway, but it was certainly an eye-opener when sometimes a black man would come up and start talking to you for two minutes and then he would say ‘I had better go now because someone might think I’m accosting you.’

I remember a boxer coming to talk with us and he said ‘I’d better go now in case I get accused’, and off he went.

Apartheid was one reason why the tour got off to a surprising start for the participants. They had gathered at Eastbourne College for pre-tour training and a get-together when a Foreign Office mandarin gave them a strong lecture on the ban on associating with non-whites. In particular, he stressed that on no account was there to be any sex with black or mixed-race people as that was a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment. It was a rude awakening about the realities of apartheid.

One of the perhaps forgotten men of that tour was Scottish lock forward Ernest Michie, who has rarely given interviews about his days as a Lion, but was happy to speak for this book. He said: ‘I missed out on the Foreign Office speech because I was a couple of days late in joining the party due to having to sit my final exams at Aberdeen University. But I remember the message loud and clear—don’t talk about politics and be pretty circumspect about who you speak to.’

Michie is disarmingly modest about his achievement in being selected:

I had played for Scotland but I was very surprised to be chosen. The University side was on a tour to London, going by bus which took about 20 hours because there was no motorway in those days.

We stopped every so often for a cup of tea, and at Watford or somewhere I was dozing on the bus when one of the chaps, Doug Robbie, who is now a doctor, came back from his cuppa and said ‘Your name’s in the list of British Lions.’ I said to him. ‘Don’t be daft,’ and I really didn’t believe it until we met up with the London Scottish boys who included Dr Doug Smith, who had been a Lion in 1950 and would manage the 1971 Lions. He assured me it was true, so I began to believe it then.

Michie really began to believe it when he made his first-ever flight on an aeroplane, from Dyce Airport near Aberdeen to London to join the squad. At Eastbourne, the squad not only got their instructions from the Foreign Office but manager Siggins also handed out strict instructions on behavioural standards and gave out the rules on cash—they would be allowed just five shillings (25p) per day pocket money. In the event, some of the Lions augmented their income by selling their complimentary match tickets, and such was the demand for Test tickets in particular that some went for £50 each. That was strictly against the rules on amateurism, but either a blind eye was turned or Siggins knew perfectly well what was happening and ignored it.

Dickie Jeeps said: ‘There was indeed a black market in tickets, especially for the Tests where they could have sold the tickets ten times over. But by the time the first Test came around you would have made some friends, and that’s where most of the tickets went, though there was undoubtedly a sale of tickets which nobody admitted to.’

The Lions themselves came up with the most famous code of tour etiquette, which has been known to touring Lions ever since as Lloyd’s Law. During a team meeting with Siggins, Welsh scrum-half Trevor Lloyd suggested that if a player was lucky enough to get himself a girlfriend, no other player should attempt to muscle in, and all of them agreed to it. Some would suggest that Lloyd’s Law did not prove to be binding on subsequent tour parties.

The Lockheed Constellation aircraft which was to be their ‘safe’ conveyance to South Africa played its part in the early adventures of the tourists. The Lions had to board and disembark a couple of times before taking off from Heathrow, and for those who had never flown before, such as Welsh back row forward Russell Robins, already jangled nerves were stretched taut. More than 50 years later he recalled: ‘I’d never been on a plane before in my life and was beginning to feel nervous about it.’

The journey via Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, and Uganda took 36 hours, but the Lions were at least able to stretch their legs while the Lockheed was refilled with fuel and that most important of cargoes: booze.

On the flight between Khartoum and Nairobi, the captain encountered difficulties with the aircraft, which was being dragged down at the tail and veering in flight. Leaving the cockpit, he went to the rear where he found 20 sizeable young men crammed into a space designed for half-a-dozen people. The Lions were having a party, and how were they to know about such things as ‘trim’ and weight distribution? Ernest Michie confirmed:

There was nobody else left on the plane but us by that time. We were all moving about chatting to each other and having a drink and I don’t think the captain could work out what was going on as the plane became a bit unstable with the surge of bodies to and fro and back and forward. He came back to see what was happening, and found that hardly anybody was sitting in their own seats. He politely asked that, if it wasn’t too much trouble, could we sit in our seats now and again?

On arrival at Johannesburg in the middle of the night, the Lions were amazed to find a huge crowd waiting to greet them. ‘I honestly think there were 10,000 people there to greet us,’ said Jeeps. ‘It was packed, and was the first time we realized what we were getting into.’

Cliff Morgan had anticipated a welcoming party, though not a crowd of that size, and had appointed himself choirmaster, helped by Tom Reid of Ireland. Under Morgan’s tutelage, the Lions had learned the old Afrikaaner folk song ‘Sarie Marais’ with its jaunty chorus that translates into English as ‘O take me back to the old Transvaal, where my Sarie lives, Down among the maize fields near the green thorn tree, there lives my Sarie Marais’. The Lions gave voice in Afrikaans and were an instant hit.

Meredith said: ‘The people took us to their hearts, and decided we were the best ever touring side even before we played a game.’

As always, getting the men of five different nations to gel together was a crucial part of the tour. ‘If truth were to be told,’ said Ernest Michie, ‘the Irish and the Scots seemed to get on very well, but there was a preponderance of Welsh players in the squad and they tended to keep to themselves a little bit.’ Farmer Jeeps has a more pithy description: ‘The Welsh stuck together like shit to a blanket, as we said plenty of times on that tour.’

Yet gel they did, helped by Siggins’ decision to rotate room-mates every few weeks. In order to help that bonding process, the 1955 Lions also set out on their first public duty the day after they arrived—a supposedly leisurely round of golf. Once again, thousands of South Africans turned out to welcome the Lions, though what it did for their nerves on the first tee can only be guessed at.

The Lions soon found out just how different rugby was in South Africa. The forwards were dragged into the sort of physical encounters they had never experienced before, but usually won sufficient ball for the Lions’ superior backs to show their paces. The sheer quality of the Lions’ play entranced their South African hosts, who nevertheless did not stand back in admiration.

Hugh McLeod said: ‘I loved the hard ground, but a lot of the guys didn’t. There was no such thing as an easy game in South Africa, no matter who you were playing. They were big guys and always at you. But the harder the game, the more I liked it.’

On a tour again beset with injuries, Clem Thomas developed appendicitis, had the necessary operation, and was back playing within five weeks. Arthur Smith, the flying Scottish winger, was not so lucky, playing in only four matches after breaking a bone in his wrist—his turn would come seven years later.

Like Smith, the walking wounded were plentiful. The Rev. Robin Roe played matches at hooker with two cracked ribs. Reg Higgins tore ligaments in the first Test and missed half the tour, while Rhys Williams had two front teeth knocked out against the Orange Free State but played on as his incensed colleagues took their opponents apart with the best form of revenge, winning 31–3.

It was after that match that the Lions also took measures to protect themselves against ‘cheap shots’, as Thomas described them. ‘It became necessary to have a fixer to stop such unprovoked attacks’, wrote Thomas in the History. ‘I was made the avenging angel. Tony O’Reilly would come up to me and say “number four” or whatever, and I was supposed to go in and mete out punishment at the next opportunity, preferably at a nice loose maul. I don’t know how I got such a difficult job!’

The Lions were learning fast about the South African approach to rugby, and it soon became clear that, in the Tests, if the forwards could raise their game to match the Springbok pack, the backs could finish the job. South African rugby might well be of a different order to the homegrown variety, but it did not make it necessarily better.

The clash of cultures off the field was just as pronounced. Clem Thomas recalled being presented with the skin of a freshly shot leopard, and later on in the tour a farmer presented him with a lion cub. ‘Siggins insisted on me donating it to a local zoo, which I did with some relief’, wrote Thomas.

As Bryn Meredith put it, ‘there’s no point in going 7,000 miles and not seeing some of the country’ and by the time they had finished the tour, the Lions had covered more than 10,000 miles within southern Africa, including Rhodesia. All are agreed that a two-day visit to Kruger Park, the national wildlife reserve and safari centre, was the highlight: ‘Travel was a bit primitive, but Kruger Park was a wonderful experience—I’ve been back three times since,’ said Dickie Jeeps.

It was early on in the tour that a certain player did a disappearing act, having fallen in love with a local girl. His name has never been revealed and, true to their ties of brotherhood, even 50-odd years later his identity is still kept a secret. Apparently he really was injured, but not as badly as was made out and the only disease he was suffering from was lovesickness. The Romeo went off with his Juliet and missed several games as a consequence. He did eventually return to the party, and the cover story of his ‘injury’ held not only then but still does. ‘What went on tour stayed on tour, even though he went off tour,’ as one 1955 Lion put it. ‘Anyway, the rest of us were just jealous.’

Dickie Jeeps had not long been married to his first wife, Jean, but does not blame his touring for the fact that they eventually split up:

It wasn’t the tour or anything that happened on it; it was me. I did meet a girl after the first Test in 1955 and it was all perfectly innocent. She liked dancing and I liked dancing, but nothing else happened. And would you believe it—the first time I went into the Mayfair Hotel in London after being selected for England, there she was, working as a receptionist.

The Lions lost their opening match to Western Transvaal 6–9, before a run of ten victories and another loss to Eastern Province took them to the first Test in Johannesburg. Ernest Michie recalls that the Test side was decided pretty much in advance, but there was competition to be named as a reserve.

‘In those days you would be named as a reserve but would only play if a member of the Test team dropped out before the match, as there were still no substitutes or replacements allowed during the match,’ said Michie.