For two decades from 2001, the fate belonged to Scotland’s players: to be honoured with selection for the British & Irish Lions, but to go without the comfort blanket of a bunch of your compatriots.
“It’s like 40-odd first dates, pretty much one after the other,” says Chris Cusiter, who was one of three Scots on the tour to New Zealand in 2005. Until the 2021 tour to South Africa, when eight Scots were selected — the same as this year’s trip to Australia — they never had more than three players in the initial squad. This year the minority baton has been passed to Wales, whose sole representatives will be Jac Morgan and Tomos Williams.
“Throughout virtually my whole career, Wales were so successful and they deservedly had huge numbers on Lions tours,” Cusiter, who won 70 Scotland caps from scrum half between 2004 and 2014, says.
“There were only three of us [Scots] on that tour: Gordy Bulloch, who was towards the end of his career by then, Simon Taylor and me. You had to make some friends quickly: there was no chance of a Scottish clique because there just weren’t enough of us.
“You obviously don’t want to be a token Scot or a token Welshman: you want to be there on merit and rise up the ranks while you’re on tour. At that time with Scotland, we weren’t winning many games. I’m sure we felt a bit of insecurity about that, about our standings on the tour and our ability. Coming from Aberdeen, it was no new thing to have a chip on your shoulder. I was desperate to prove I deserved to be there.
“There were obviously a lot [20] of English players because it was two years after they’d won a World Cup. At the start, you were just trying to put your best foot forward and get to know a load of people who were all already very comfortable with each other. If you’re introverted, that can feel uncomfortable, but it’s still a rugby environment. Everyone is cut from the same cloth. And you meet some really interesting characters from different walks of life.
“I remember the Welsh guys being particularly down to earth. Good fun, friendly guys. Everyone’s excited to be there. I think, no matter if you’re a World Cup winner, a grand-slam winner, it still aligns you.”
Mike Blair, another scrum half, was initially overlooked for the 2009 tour to South Africa. He was called up prior to departure after Ireland’s Tomas O’Leary suffered a broken ankle, but only following several weeks of conjecture about which of him, Cusiter and Danny Care would get the nod.
“At the back of my mind, I guess I had that sense of, ‘Do they really want me here?’ because I wasn’t selected in the original party and then there was that long period of, ‘Is this happening or not?’ ” recalls the former Edinburgh and Glasgow man, who is now attack coach with the Kobe Steelers in Japan.
“In terms of bonding with other players, it was so different back then, when social media wasn’t anything like as big a thing. A lot of guys now will have interacted through social media, and so feel like they know each other even if they haven’t actually played against each other loads.
“I’m not the most socially confident guy when meeting new people, so it definitely felt like the first day of school; like we were feeling each other out. I’m quiet when I don’t know someone. But I like to be part of the group, if I know people and feel more confident. It definitely takes a while to integrate when you’re coming in like that [with few national team-mates].”
Rooming with Leigh Halfpenny and then James Hook gave Blair an “in” with the Welsh contingent, but he still wishes he had found a way to carry himself with the swagger of a man who at that time was one of the best on the planet in his position, as evidenced by his nomination for the World Player of the Year award the previous year.
“Before the last three tours I’ve emailed all the Scottish guys selected to tell them ways I would have done things differently. A lot of it was about that mindset of ‘You’ve been chosen for a reason’. As Scottish people, we’re often down on ourselves. Other nations go chest out with real confidence. We’ve definitely got people in Scotland with confidence, and they’re often the ones who succeed the most.”
Tommy Seymour echoes these sentiments from his own experiences in 2017, when him and Stuart Hogg were the only two Scots named in the original squad. Greig Laidlaw, Finn Russell and Allan Dell all featured at some point thereafter, but with 16 players from England, 12 from Wales and 11 from Ireland, this was very much a three-legged stool.
“I wouldn’t be the most extroverted person in the world anyway, certainly not in new environments, so becoming comfortable took a little bit longer, if I ever became truly, truly comfortable throughout the journey.
“You’ve played against a lot of these players, you’ve maybe shared a few words off the field, but hunkering down with them for a lengthy period of time is a completely different kettle of fish. It was the first time I’d had that feeling probably since way back in my under-19 days: that feeling of walking into a room and seeing your room-mate on the other bed. Saying hello and trying to make conversation.
“I probably don’t break the [Scottish] mould in terms of going outside the self-deprecating side of things — I’ve spoken before about the impostor syndrome I felt as a player. For the first week as people fed into camp through the end of their own domestic seasons, you were having the same feeling of awkwardness and trying to start a conversation.”
Seymour — who now works in the commercial department of the SRU — knew Rory Best and Iain Henderson from his early days at Ulster, and got to know the England players through rooming with Jonathan Joseph and Maro Itoje. It was only when bunking up with Laidlaw that he felt truly relaxed, however. “I wouldn’t say it was a case of being able to take off the mask, but you didn’t feel like you were needing to force a conversation or impress anyone.”
Cusiter’s tour was infamous for essentially becoming two tours run in parallel, with the half back, who played for Border Reivers at the time, very much in the midweek camp. Increasingly aware of their fate, that group bonded quickly. “In any professional team the guys who aren’t playing regularly band together; hopefully it stays positive, and a good coach will involve everyone, but it definitely becomes a ‘We’re the outsiders’ mentality.”
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Donncha O’Callaghan, the Ireland lock, came up with a song for the team bus that riffed on the 1999 Travis hit Driftwood. “We’re driftwood, touring with the Lions, playing on a Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday,” Cusiter, who now works for a whisky business in California, recalls with a smile. “I actually met Fran Healy [the Travis lead singer] at a do a couple of years ago and told him about that version — he seemed to think it was a laugh!
“Clive Woodward tried to do it a bit differently: two separate sets of coaches and two squads. I can understand the logic, but it didn’t work. It’s not been done before or since and I don’t think they’ll ever do it again. Regardless of which country a player comes from, or who is there with him, the key is to keep everyone involved, motivated and feeling like they have a chance.”
