THERE are some big men in Cape Town. There is Springbok loose-head prop, Os du Randt, the giant-sized ox from the Free State. To share a lift with him as it plummets to earth on the outside of one of the city's mountain-scraping hotels is truly a journey on the edge.
You couldn't move too far either in this rugby supporter-teeming city without bumping into a rogues' gallery of former international props - Paul `The Judge' Rendall, Coochie Chilcott, mobile-phone wielding Mike Burton or even old jutting chin himself, Lions manager Fran Cotton. There are all huge men.
Tom Smith and Paul Wallace are but boys by comparison. And it mattered not a damn. There is no doubt that a pre-Test vox pop would have condemned the two Lions props to a miserable fate at the hands of the Springbok bruisers up against them. Smith and Wallace were too small, too anonymous, too inexperienced, far too coy and reticent to make any impact in the rough old front-row trade.
The first four scrums of the match bore out the gloomy prognosis. Each scrum dipped and buckled as the Lions struggled desperately to absorb the Springbok power drive. Up in the New lands stands the pundits nodded sagely and began to pencil in their unforgiving verdicts. Eighty minutes later it was the Springbok pack that was in retreat.
This astonishing Test victory was a triumph of spirit, of character but, above all else, of selection. It would have been so easy for the Lions management to have played safe and picked the known quantities, the foursquare veterans of the front-row, Jason Leonard and Dai Young. But the coaches, McGeechan and Telfer, put their faith in form over reputation.
There is no way that Smith and Wallace should have survived. But propping is as much a matter of the soul as it is of the body. There have, though, been technical adjustments made to counter the ferocious hit and drive favoured by Springbok packs. British and Irish sides still have to abide by the crouch-touch-pause-engage edict as if scrumming were a form of ballroom dancing. That is why the Lions pack struggled in their early games. They were unused to the instant hit and shove.
But they learnt and they adapted. On Saturday you could see the benefits. They go low and at the last moment take a very small shuffle pace across so as to get in underneath. The Boks didn't like it.
What has galvanised this squad has been the sense of trust and belief in the management. Those who play well will be picked. There has been no whingeing and no cliques. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this. So many Lions parties have been riven by national rivalries and jealousies, by a sense of unjust selection and preferential treatment.
McGeechan, Telfer and Cotton swept all those ruinous and divisive inclinations aside with their choice of team for this match. Smith, Wallace and Davidson did not let them down.
