The Lions have asked for five of Wales's grand slam-winning management team to join the head coach, Ian McGeechan, on next year's tour to South Africa. The British and Irish outfit want Wales's head coach, Warren Gatland, to take charge of the forwards, Shaun Edwards to look after the defence, Rob Howley to manage the attack, Craig White to head the fitness team and Rhys Long to oversee analysis. All five have worked for Wasps this decade and McGeechan is the club's current director of rugby. It is expected that the Welsh Rugby Union's board of directors will agree to the request today.
As well as having a club bond, the six also cover all four home unions. Gatland was Ireland's head coach between 1998 and 2001, White worked for Ireland early this decade, McGeechan had two spells coaching Scotland and, like Edwards, works for an English club, and Howley toured South Africa with the Lions as a player in 1997, the last time McGeechan was the tourists' head coach and the last time they won a series.
Wales tour the United States and Canada next summer but the WRU chairman, David Pickering, stressed that it would not act as a barrier for the Lions. "It is not for me to say who the Lions are considering for their coaching team, nor will we be announcing anything after our board meeting, because the Lions will be revealing all next week," he said. "It would be a tribute to our management team were any of them to join up with the Lions and it would fittingly reflect on the excellent work they have done with us.
"Our stance on any approach is that we are part of the Lions and fully support them. We expect to receive a large financial contribution from the tour but this is something that is about giving, not receiving. We have to weigh up the objectives we have for Welsh rugby but the tour to north America will be about development of coaches as well as players."
The Lions have decided that small is beautiful after the failure of Sir Clive Woodward's jumbo army to storm New Zealand in 2005 when the three-Test series ended in a whitewash, the first suffered by the tourists for 22 years. On that occasion they took 45 players and a 26-strong management team, with separate coaches for the Saturday and midweek teams.
No more than 36 players will be chosen next year, with a considerably smaller backup team. McGeechan, Gatland, Edwards and Howley will prepare the side for each match and White, who was a fitness coach with the Lions three years ago, will head the conditioning team. He followed Gatland from Ireland to Wasps in 2002 and later became Leicester's strength and conditioning coach. This week he was appointed Wales's national performance manager until the 2011 World Cup.
Howley went on two tours with the Lions. He was injured before the start of the Test series in South Africa but played in all three matches against Australia four years later. He joined Wales's coaching staff, along with Edwards, last January after Gatland's appointment, having joined the Cardiff Blues management when he was forced by a wrist injury to give up his playing career the season after helping Wasps win the Heineken Cup in 2004 with the winning try against Toulouse in the final at Twickenham.
McGeechan coached the Lions in 1989 and 1993 as well as 1997. He was part of Woodward's coaching team, taking charge of the successful midweek side, and it is at his prompting that the tourists are reverting to a more traditional, intimate approach with every player going on the tour believing he has a chance of playing in the opening Test rather than some knowing from the off that they are making up the numbers.
