‘Find him and knock him out’ – Lions spin doctor left players seething with shock speech ...Middle East

It was the Lions tour from hell.

Whether it was a bizarre team-bonding activity of collectively working on a painting, a ghastly fear of being spied on or a tour-ending injury to superstar Brian O’Driscoll in the first game, nothing went right for the Lions in 2005.

But few of the incidents on the dreaded visit to New Zealand that year were as polarising as a team talk from Alastair Campbell.

So controversial was the speech, it left one player wanting to render the 68-year-old unconscious on the training pitch.

In the years preceding the 2005 Lions tour, Campbell worked as the Official Spokesperson for former Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997 to 2000, becoming known as Labour’s ‘spin doctor’.

Campbell remained in the political communications sphere immediately afterwards and became the Downing Street Director of Communications and Strategy, where he again worked under the leadership of Blair.

So when he was brought into the fold by then-Lions coach Sir Clive Woodward ahead of the 2005 tour to be the team’s Head of Communications, eyebrows were raised.

Despite being recruited to minimise the number of alarming headlines, Campbell soon generated one all of his own doing.

The Lions copped a 21-3 battering from the All Blacks in the first Test, but the leading story was O’Driscoll’s injury.

Given the scoreline, the fact the discussion was centred around O’Driscoll meant Woodward and his players largely avoided a stream of scathing analyses in the aftermath.

But internally, Woodward knew something needed to change.

So he turned to Campbell to give a speech to his players in attempt to shake things up.

It went down like a lead balloon.

In a piece from The Guardian, 2005 tourist Matt Dawson recalled Campbell likened the Lions tour to soldiers who were in Iraq at the time.

“He suggests we lack desire and tries to use the example of a theatre of war to put our situation into perspective,” Dawson said.

Fellow tourist Paul O’Connell was equally miffed.

According to Irishman, Campbell told the players ‘that in every campaign and every crisis, there comes a moment when the people in the thick of it realise they need to dig deep but that he didn’t get that feeling looking at us.’

“He didn’t have the sense that we were fighting back,” O’Connell wrote in his book, ‘The Battle’.

As for Campbell, he felt his speech garnered a mixed reaction from the players.

“I had prepared it quite carefully, I’d thought it through,” Campbell said on Will Greenwood’s Rugby Podcast in 2021.

“But I could sense in the room that there were some who were genuinely engaged.

“But others, I remember Martin Corry was absolutely seething.”

Corry was not the only one left seeing red after Campbell’s talk.

Dawson claimed ‘everyone’s expression is one of disbelief’ and he was ‘getting angry inside’.

“At the end we are bristling,” Dawson added.

Eddie O’Sullivan, who was a member of Woodward’s coaching staff, said: “You could have heard a pin drop. The speech was lunacy.”

Such was O’Connell’s rage at Campbell’s speech, he had one directive on his mind.

“On the training pitch the following morning, I was still thinking about Alastair’s few words and getting more and more p***** off,” O’Connell said.

“I decided what I was going to do when the session was over: find Alastair Campbell and knock him out.

“There wouldn’t be any need for questions or explanations. Everyone would know what it was for.”

Perhaps Campbell was on a hiding to nothing given the way he began his speech.

“Matt Dawson said I lost some of them from the word go because I started off by saying, ‘Compared to you guys I know nothing about rugby,'” Campbell said.

“That may be true, but it was my way of saying, ‘I’m coming at this from a totally different perspective, I hope I can give you an insight.'”

It was evident the speech failed to have the desired immediate or long-term impact, as the Lions were walloped 48-18 and 38-19 by the All Blacks in the second and third Tests respectively.

The Lions will look to avoid a similar clean sweep on their tour to Australia, with their first game down under to take place on June 28 against the Western Force.

Rugby fans won’t miss a minute of the Lions tour down under, as every match will be exclusively broadcast live on talkSPORT.

The Lions on talkSPORT

talkSPORT has all of the British and Irish Lions matches live across the network. Eddie Jones is among the star-studded line-up leading the coverage Down Under.

June 20, Dublin: Lions vs Argentina

June 28, Perth: Lions vs Western Force

July 2, Brisbane: Lions vs Queensland Reds

July 5, Sydney: Lions vs New South Wales Waratahs

July 9, Canberra: Lions vs ACT Brumbies

July 12, Adelaide: Lions v ANZAC XV

July 12, Brisbane: Lions v Wallabies

July 22, Melbourne: Lions v First Nations and Pasifika XV

July 26, Melbourne: Lions v Wallabies

August 2, Sydney: Lions v Wallabies

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