| 1924 British Lions Tour to South Africa | |
|---|---|
| Date | 12 July – 25 September |
| Coach(es) | Harry Packer |
| Tour captain(s) | Ronald Cove-Smith |
| Test series winners | South Africa (3 - 0) |
| Top test point scorer(s) | Tom Voyce (6) |
| ← Argentina 1910 Argentina 1927 → | |
| British Isles in tour 1924 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| destination: South Africa and Rhodesia |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Test match opponents | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The 1924 British Isles tour to South Africa was the tenth tour by a British Isles team and the fifth to South Africa. The tour is retrospectively classed as one of the British Lions tours, as the Lions naming convention was not adopted until 1950. As well as South Africa, the tour included a game in Salisbury in Rhodesia, in what would become present day Harare in Zimbabwe.
Led by England's Ronald Cove-Smith and managed by former Wales international Harry Packer, the tour took in 21 matches. Of the 21 games, 17 were against club or invitational teams and four were test matches against the South African national team. The British Isles lost three and drew one of the test matches making it one of the least successful Lions tours to South Africa - the 1962 and 1968 tourists also lost their test series three matches to nil with one draw. The tourist also suffered badly in the non-test games losing six and drawing one, including a run where they failed to win over an eight match period.
Several reasons have been put forward regarding the poor performance of the British Isles. The team itself was fairly unrepresentative of the best the home nations could have supplied, during a period where British rugby wasn't in its finest phase. The team also suffered from a heavy attrition rate to injury attributed to the very dry South African playing pitches; conditions that once suited British back play, and were so short of players during some periods the team was forced to use players in foreign positions.
On their return at least two of the players on the tour, Roy Muir Kinnear and Thomas Holliday went on to become dual code rugby internationals after they switched to rugby league.
The match against Orange Free State Country was a peculiar match with the home team being much weaker. Fortune shone upon the home team though, when they won the toss and decided to play with a howling wind on their backs. Half time, the wind died down and proceeded to blow with the same vengeance in the opposite direction. This advantage was enough to ensure a 6-0 win for the home side.
Read more about 1924 British Lions Tour To South Africa: Results
Famous quotes containing the words british, lions, tour, south and/or africa:
“You don’t know Leonie. She married me to achieve insecurity, and now you’re trying to take it away from her.”
—David Mercer, British screenwriter, and Karel Reisz. Morgan (David Warner)
“No stout
Lesson showed how to chat with death. We brought
No brass fortissimo, among our talents,
To holler down the lions in this air.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Left Washington, September 6, on a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.... Absent nineteen days. Received every where heartily. The country is again one and united! I am very happy to be able to feel that the course taken has turned out so well.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Everywhere—all over Africa and South America ... you see these suburbs springing up. They represent the optimum of what people want. There’s a certain sort of logic leading towards these immaculate suburbs. And they’re terrifying, because they are the death of the soul.... This is the prison this planet is being turned into.”
—J.G. (James Graham)