On Monday night the Lions management hosted a highly entertaining quiz for members of the travelling media. It stopped just short of requiring a citing commissioner but, suffice to say, the whole thing came down to one team's suspiciously good knowledge of Celine Dion's back catalogue and a wrongly captioned picture of Mike Phillips. Never let it be said the 2009 Lions party lacks for competitiveness off the field.
Very shortly, though, things are about to get deadly serious. The naming of the Springbok squad for the Test series has concentrated minds in both camps and further underlined the depth at South Africa's disposal. Here is an illuminating quiz question for you: how many South African-born players were plying their trade at a decent level in European club rugby last year? The answer is positively frightening: according to the excellent SA Rugby Annual, there were no fewer than 228 of them living in voluntary exile, including 37 full Springbok internationals.
When you add that little lot to the battalions of homegrown provincial Currie Cup players and schools representatives you begin to appreciate why even a scratch team like last weekend's Royal XV contains players good enough to give a decent Lions side the runaround. As well as the 2007 World Cup, South Africa have just won the World Sevens title and their coach believes they also have a decent chance of winning the upcoming World U20 championship in Japan. The Bulls' demolition of a Waikato team containing half a dozen All Blacks was merely the icing on an increasingly substantial cake. No wonder Saracens believe that recruiting a bunch of South Africans to play in the Guinness Premiership next season is worth a punt.
The upshot is that competition for places in the Springbok squad can rarely have been so intense. "It's amazing to see how blessed we are as a nation in terms of the amount of talent we have," observed their captain John Smit after the list of names to face the Lions had been announced live on television. When the interviewer asked for assessments of certain individuals, Smit's smart response - "I'm really happy they're on my side" – pretty much said it all.
None of this is to suggest the Lions have no chance in the forthcoming series. An awful lot can change between now and the first Test on 20 June. But the truth of the matter is that even New Zealand may soon be struggling to match the pool of talent at South Africa's disposal, let alone the hunger of those on the fringes. The highly competitive schools system in the country does no harm either and there appears to be greater consistency in selection than has sometimes been the case.
Viewed under the harshest of microscopes you might argue that Peter de Villiers' senior squad does not include a specialist full-back or an experienced world-beater at No10 and that the front-row are not as intimidating as some. Did not a very similar side fail to score a single point at home to New Zealand in Cape Town less than a year ago? They can blow hot and cold for no obvious reason while De Villiers has never been involved in a series of this scale.
South Africa can also only have 15 men on the field at any one time. As England have occasionally found, strength in depth is relatively meaningless if you have a surfeit of players of moderate ability and insufficient game-breakers. On balance, though, you have to wonder if the Lions are about to collide with a speeding juggernaut. Warren Gatland reckoned the Bulls would have beaten most international sides in Pretoria last Saturday and, even allowing for a teaspoon of kidology, it is fair to say the tour management were massively impressed. How the entire squad responds is now the six million dollar question.
