(MENAFN- AFP) A British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand is considered the sternest test in modern rugby but pales in comparison to the challenges, both on and off the field, faced by the original Lions in 1888.
The Victorian trailblazers spent eight months away from home on a tour that included both Australia and New Zealand, starting with a 47-day voyage via the Canary Islands and Cape Town just to reach their destination.
Their crowded schedule included 35 games of rugby -- compared to 10 for the 2017 Lions -- and 19 of Australian Rules, a code they had never played before, with a cricket match thrown in for good measure.
The squad had to deal with the tragic drowning death of their captain mid-tour and faced the threat of life bans if hostile rugby authorities decided they had breached the game's strict amateur standards.
Despite the hardships, they changed rugby forever, starting the rich Lions tradition and introducing revolutionary passing and scrummaging tactics that southern hemisphere nations adopted with gusto.
Their treatment by England's Rugby Football Union also indirectly contributed to the creation of the breakaway code of rugby league in 1895, after players decided they wanted to be paid for their efforts.
"The pioneers of 1888 departed scorning authority and, after heartbreak and sorrow, they returned home in glory," Australian sports historian Sean Fagan said in his book "The First Lions of Rugby".
- Balls overboard -
Such far-reaching consequences were far from the minds of the tour organisers, a trio of English international cricketers who saw it purely as a money-making exercise.
The squad's 22 players, known as "The English Footballers", were mostly from northern rugby clubs, although there were also five Scots and a Welshman.
To increase gate takings, Victoria and South Australia were included on the itinerary, even though the states played only Australian Rules, not rugby.
Copies of the unfamiliar code's rules were given to the players, along with three leather practice balls.
However Fagan says it appears no one could be bothered reading the rules and, worse still, all the balls were accidentally kicked overboard during the voyage south.
Also aboard the steamer Kaikoura were 300 stoats and weasels, intended to combat a rabbit plague in New Zealand, where the predators are now considered feral pests.
Problems even began before the team departed, when forward Jack Clowes was banned from playing after the RFU deemed him a professional for receiving 15 pounds to buy clothing for the tour.
It meant Clowes, a Yorkshire factory worker, was unable to play for the entire trip, while the RFU's animosity also stymied any hopes the tour would include international fixtures.
Clowes' treatment caused resentment and, when the working-class north broke away to form rugby league seven years later, his club Halifax was at the heart of the rebel movement.
But the low point of the tour was undoubtedly the death of skipper Bob Seddon, who drowned when he went sculling on the Hunter River in New South Wales and his boat capsized.
"Were it not that our promoters' interests are at stake, we would one and all prefer, under the circumstances, to disband and return home," forward John Smith wrote after the 28-year-old's death.
- 'Fascinating and impressive' -
Mostly though, a festive atmosphere prevailed.
Small towns greeted the tourists with parades featuring bunting and flags, while crowds of tens of thousands turned out to see them play in the big cities.
On the field, they even managed to make a fist of Australian Rules (then known as Victorian Rules), winning six and drawing one of their 19 games.
Their cricket match against a Canterbury XI ended in a draw.
But it was in rugby where they really left their mark with 27 wins, six draws and only two defeats in 35 matches -- a 77 percent winning percentage that any modern Lions squad would covet.
Dave Gallagher, captain of the original 1905 All Blacks, said the 1888 tourists schooled locals in "the fine points of the game".
"The exhibitions of passing which they gave were most fascinating and impressive to the New Zealander, who was not slow to realise the advantages of these methods," he wrote in "The Complete Rugby Footballer".
"One may safely say that, from that season, dates the era of high-class rugby in the colony."
Seddon and the 1888 "English Footballers" were inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2013, 125 years after their trip to the Southern Hemisphere.
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