"Excuse me, who are these people?" It was a common enough refrain from some of the many bemused onlookers amongst the 50 or so people in the arrivals area of Perth international airport on Saturday afternoon. The people in question were of course the neatly attired - if a little weary - Lions after their 20-hour journey from London via Singapore.
As entrances go this was more tradesman's than red carpet but all the better for that most probably. Perth is an ideal starting point really, more accessible than the more populated eastern half of the continent and with a relatively passing interest in rugby union. This is Aussie Rules territory. You had to plough through 13 pages of AFL coverage in the tabloid Sunday Times and then a couple of pages of tennis before finding the page devoted to the arrival of Martin Johnson and company.
Johnson cut his usually imposing presence, even dwarfing Donal Lenihan as they fielded questions jointly. The first official words emanating from the mouths of Lions were familiar stuff, Graham Henry re-iterating his mantra of his recent weeks. "We're hoping to play to our strengths and find one or two Australian weaknesses," he smiled, knowing full well he was saying something close to nothing. Of necessity, of course, he cannot give the slightest clue as to the Lions' style of play and so they all trotted out the customary respectful comments about their hosts.
Henry reckoned they'd actually "achieved more" than they'd hoped in that first preparatory week in Aldershot. "It's hard to visualise what you're going to do in that first week and where you're going to get to, but I think we got about 40 per cent down the track when we thought we'd be about 25 per cent, so it was a positive start."
The two primary purposes of the first week's exercise were to bond the squad and their four disparate national groupings, and also begin to evolve a style of play. "We did a lot of team-building stuff. The Impact people who did the team-building exercises for the last (Lions) tour to South Africa worked with the group again," said Henry. Aside from forming a band, more an orchestra really in which everyone had to take part, Henry revealed with a still incredulous smile: "We did all sorts of things like climbing up great big things up in the air and then shouting like hell. And we did some dragon boat racing."
By Perth airport standards the Lions' arrival prompted a kerfuffle of Heathrowesque proportions. It's nearest major city is Singapore, over four-and-a-half hours away by plane. In covering almost a third of the Australian continent, Western Australia is roughly the size of India but with less than one per cent of that country's population. Of the state's 1.7 million inhabitants over two thirds live in Perth.
The Lions have based themselves south of Perth, though effectively a southern extension of the city's flat sprawling suburbia, in Freemantle by the Indian ocean. Almost hitting the ground running, the squad checked into their hotel and within four hours of touching down had a light run-out at nearby Freemantle Oval. All bar Jonny Wilkinson (groin strain) and Dai Young (calf) of the 37-man squad took part over the opening couple of days.
On Sunday morning the Lions management decided the first training session would be at 7.30 a.m. local time, on the premise that the jet-lagged players would probably be up and about by then anyhow, even though their body clocks were telling them it was 1.30 a.m.
Even at that ungodly Sunday hour, there was a fair sprinkling of sprucely kitted out cyclists dotting the running/cycling track which lines the Swan River that runs into the heart of Perth - akin, you half felt, to a secret society and one taking its health a little too seriously.
Even at a delayed 8.15 a.m. only the birds were at the nearby Tompkins Park to greet the Lions for their first full-scale session. Adjacent to the Swan River, in the distance to a tree-lined, flat, scenic backdrop were the cluster of skyscrapers in downtown Perth, which were initially shrouded in a sunny mist.
Before the end of the two-and-a-half-hour session the skyscrapers had vanished and the players had been submerged in rain. "They brought the weather with them," reckoned one of the dozen or so expats (an Irishman) who trickled into the ground. Several hundred or so attended the 3.30 p.m. session which followed a similar format.
Twenty minutes or so of warm-ups conducted by the booming baritone of Wales's Newcastle-born fitness adviser Steve Black were followed by a variety of continuity drills which were overseen by Graham Henry and Andy Robinson, interspersed with some defensive drills under the coaching of Phil Larder before the nucleus of Friday's opening selection against Western Australia broke away. This again enabled the offensive and defensive coaching units to work in tandem.
The spirit of camaraderie is clearly well established already but it was all highly serious, if highly skilled, stuff, before the squad attempts to conduct training behind closed doors on day two away from prying Wallaby eyes. And they, reputedly, pry better than any of them.
This being winter, with the temperatures reaching around 18-19 degrees celsius, night comes early and the lights came on before the end of the second session. It had been the first of many long days and perhaps by the time they leave for Sydney six weeks hence, even the onlookers in the airport departure area will have some idea as to who they are.
