Features

Rugby Rugby's Oracle, Paul Dobson takes us back in time and has a look at some of the great Lions of the past ... and tells us who he regards as the most remarkable of all.

The Lions are coming - a source of great excitement every 12 years. Great personalities have played for the Lions and their lineal ancestors in the early tours of 1891, 1896, 1903 and 1910. There have been players like Willie John McBride, Butterfield and Davies in the centres, Barry John, Gareth, Gordon Brown, Cherry Pillman who introduced loose forward play to South Africa, Mike Gibson, Cliff Morgan, Fran Cotton, Fergus Slattery, JPR, Martin Johnson, Tony O'Reilly, smooth Gerald Davies, JJ Williams and many, many more.

But the greatest character/personality of all those touring teams was Tommy Crean - Thomas Joseph Crean, VC, DSO, a rambunctious man. His life was a short and remarkable one.

He came to South Africa with the 1896 team, an Anglo-Irish combination. Johnny Hammond of England was the captain of the 1896 but the real leader was Tommy Crean, and at times he led his team a merry dance.

On their long, slow journeys by ox wagon, going from Port Elizabeth to Grahamstown and on to King William's Town and then to East London, he would challenge all and sundry to a fight. At one stage, on the way to King William's Town, he mourned: "Nobody will fight with me." It was not quite Alexander the Great, weeping because he had no more worlds to conquer, but there was something of the Greek god about handsome, dashing, athletic Crean, something of the Apollo.

Bishop William Carey of Bloemfontein, also an Irishman and also on the 1896 tour, said of Crean: "He was the most Irish, the most inconsequent, the most gallant, the most lovable personality one could ever imagine and he made the centre of the whole tour."

During the tour the team were on their way to Newlands to play Western Province. They stopped at Groote Schuur to have lunch with the prime minister of the Cape Colony, Sir Gordon Sprigg, who produced some fine champagne and asked Crean - the obvious leader of the side - if the players could have champagne, to which Crean agreed. He insisted that his team each drink four tumblers - and a tumbler is much, much bigger than a champagne flute - of champagne - no more, no less. They went off to Newlands and drew 0-0 with Western Province. The teams met later in the tour and the champagne-less tourists won 32-0, still the biggest defeat Western Province has suffered against the tourists.

After the tour Dr Crean of the Royal College of Surgeons settled in Boksburg and was in practice in the rough mining town. On one occasion he was naked and shaving when a man burst in to ask for medical help. Crean was incensed. He said to the man: "How dare you enter my premises while I am shaving naked? You have an ugly face. I want to fight you."

The man fled with Crean after him, naked and brandishing a shaving brush. The man got back to his house and locked the door. Crean stood outside bellowing to him to come out. A crowd gathered and eventually a policeman arrived, giving Crean his jack to cover his exposed private part. Dangling the coat like a kilt Crean stalked home in high dudgeon.

On one occasion a drinking mate asked him to take a diamond ring to the girl of his fancy in attempt to woo her. Crean went off with the ring and returned with a pile of booze and the news for the would-be suitor: "My boy, I have saved you. She's a withered crone of no intelligence and I've decided she's unworthy of you. I knew your heart would be breaking  and so I sold the ring and I've come to help you drown your sorrows."

Crean was in Johannesburg when the South African (Anglo-Boer) War broke out.  He joined  the Imperial Light Horse as a trooper and in 1901 in the  Battle if Tyergkloof in 1901 he was wounded twice. Enraged and crying "I'm kilt entirely" he rose up and charged the Boers. He was awarded a Victoria Cross, one of four international rugby players so honoured, three from the Wanderers club in Dublin.

He was invalided out of the army in London but, married Victoria, a beautiful, high-born Spaniard, and the father of two children, Patrick and Carmelita, at the outbreak of World War I he again joined up;. At the Battle of Mons the British forces suffered heavy losses, including all its medical men except Crean. When his commanding officer saw him walking about, smoking a cigarette, to attend the wounded, the officer ordered him to take shelter but Crean put an arm around the officer and said: "General, m'darling, 'tis written that I shall die in m'bed. The boys need me. Go I must." He went on attending the wounded till sunset. This time he was decorated with a DSO.

He died in his bed as he had predicted  He died in London on 25 March 1923, aged just 49. His only son Patrick was an actor, famous for sword-fighting scenes. He died in 2003, aged 93. In fact Tom Crean's end was miserable. His wounds had shrivelled him, he became diabetic, he could not practise medicine and he got into terrible debt.