British & Irish Lions | Lions Legends: Simon Shaw

25 October 2023 12:46 Reading Time: 10 mins

One of the British & Irish Lions’ tallest ever players, Simon Shaw made an enormous contribution to one of the great Test matches in Lions history.

On his Lions Test debut, the 6ft8 second row was crowned Player of the Match in the epic 28-25 defeat to South Africa in 2009.

Here, Shaw shines a light on his Lions experiences and a turbulent 12-year relationship which fittingly ended on a high note.

John Spence, the sports master at Godalming Sixth Form College, spotted me wandering over to football trials. He stopped me before I got there and said, ‘shouldn’t you be heading to the rugby pitches?’ I didn’t really know how to play or what the rules were at the time. But I gave it a go and found it relatively easy, mainly because I was so big compared to everyone else. I was 6ft9 and probably about 20 stone at the age of 15, 16.

I lived in Hindhead but my main club was Guildford and Godalming (now Guildford RFC). I wanted to go to Cranleigh Rugby Club because all my mates from college were there, but it was a bit too far away.

At Godalming I quickly progressed into the first team, aged 15 or so, with no one really paying too much attention to my age.

I’m not being big-headed when I say I found it relatively easy, I was just a mountain of a boy. I played football so I was coordinated, some would say athletic although I tend to disagree on that point, but I managed to work things out pretty quickly.

I played No.8 at college simply because if I played on one side of the scrum, it would spin round. So it was deemed more sensible to play No.8 and I scored an awful lot of tries, picking the ball up from the back of the scrum and invariably scoring.

I was pushed into the second row when playing seniors at Cranleigh or Guildford but I didn’t particularly like playing there as much as I did eight, so I played a hybrid version of the two. I didn’t like the one- or two-dimensional play of a second row, which back then was just to push in the scrum, jump in the lineout and hit rucks. I didn’t particularly want to do that and I didn’t see myself playing very long if I had to do that. So I tended to hang around the three-quarters hoping for a pass every now and then. In that respect, I probably was more enthusiastic than most second rows to touch the ball and be part of the game play rather than to just be a facilitator.

As my introduction to rugby was fairly accidental, I didn’t have a bank of history or knowledge on the game. I remember my dad watching a lot of rugby, but I was more interested in football growing up in Kenya and Spain and I watched Tottenham Hotspur a lot.

I didn’t know who was who, the only rugby I knew was when I played and the recent Lions and England players just one generation before me, so the likes of Dean Richards, Ben Clarke, Will Carling. I looked up to them and I did watch the occasional Lions game, but I didn’t know the history of the 1974 Tour to South Africa, or about Roger Uttley and Willie John McBride.

Obviously I wanted to play for England and the Lions was the next step, but I guess I didn’t appreciate the magnitude of it at the time.

My call up to the 1997 Tour coincided with a rule change which fundamentally changed everything about the way I had to approach the game, with the introduction of lineout lifting.

Everyone on that Tour played extremely well, bar none. You couldn’t really separate any of the starting positions from the replacements because everyone could have done a job on the day. We were all playing top quality rugby and I would include myself in that. I think the difference when it came down to selection was that lifting had come into the game and contesting the lineout had become quite a focal point. I was very heavy at that stage, probably 22 stone, and Jeremy Davidson was probably about 18 stone.

You had to come up with clever arrangements for winning and contesting ball and I just wasn’t really someone you could lift up and hold. As much as we were all having fun and it was a great laugh, my major downfall at that point was that I wasn’t a designated lineout aficionado. The reason I was selected for the Tour was my ability to run with the ball, pass the ball, offload, which was also a very much a focus of that Lions team and the way that Ian McGeechan wished us to play, but Jeremy offered lineout competition.

My abiding memory of Doddie Weir on that Tour was how refreshingly warm, welcoming and cheery he was. Everything that everyone knows about Doddie today, was immediately evident.

There were world-renowned players in that squad like Jeremy Guscott and Scott Gibbs, and coming in as a youngster, I was quite daunted by the presence of all those people.

I guess there’s a reluctance to necessarily go up to them, say hi and shake their hand and be warm and open, so it’s a fairly tense environment in the first few days, which is why you see these groups come in to do team building exercises.

Without really knowing me and having probably played only a couple of times against him with England and Wasps, Doddie just embraced me and said, ‘big fella, how you going?’ and just made everything feel so much more natural. I had an immediate connection with him, I think his character rubbed off on everyone, and obviously dealing with his plight, he was able to use that infectious warmth to do no end of good in raising awareness around motor neurone disease.

In the season leading up to the 2001 Tour to Australia, I had quite a number of back and neck issues. So while it was a reasonably good season for Wasps, I wasn’t having much success personally.

Whilst it was a disappointment to miss out, I gave myself enough reasons to understand why I wasn’t involved and therefore not selected. I was bitterly disappointed but you try to rationalise it. Watching games from home gave me that energy and enthusiasm to try so much harder next time round to make sure I didn’t miss out.

Ahead of the 2005 Tour to New Zealand, Wasps had won three back-to-back titles, a Challenge Cup and a Champions Cup. I was everpresent and felt as though I was in the form of my life. So when I missed out initially on the squad, it was a huge disappointment. Again, the person who probably didn’t consider me the right person for the job was Clive Woodward, who’d obviously not picked me in 2003 for the England World Cup squad.

We had won the Premiership title the week before the Lions played Argentina and I’d won Man of the Match in that game. I was at the peak of my powers but perhaps just didn’t play the style of game the coaches were looking for. Then I got the chance to go out there very early on, replacing Malcolm O’Kelly, and did my very best to try and get in the matchday squad at least. I didn’t get that opportunity and again I think I played some pretty decent rugby on that Tour, but just didn’t get the nod.

We’ve faced some formidable @AllBlacks and @Springboks sides over the years 🇳🇿🇿🇦

Who would win this one? ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/CZTFJNtO3M

— British & Irish Lions (@lionsofficial) October 25, 2023

I was still playing well in 2009 and I felt I’d earned enough stripes under a number of the coaches that were on that Tour, the likes of Shaun Edwards, Warren Gatland and Rob Howley, for them to know my capabilities and know what I brought, not just in terms of my playing ability, but also as a squad member and a big match mentality.

At the outset I felt I was there to hold the squad together in some fashion. My experience of tours is that the ones that perhaps go sour are when people lose belief and don’t see an opportunity, which causes a split in the squad. In South Africa, everybody had the same ambition and the belief that there was an opportunity, even after the first Test match.

Whilst I had an absolutely miserable first game on tour against Royal XV, I still believe that my performances merited at least a bench position in the first Test. That didn’t come to pass but I was very lucky to be given the opportunity in the second Test, which was a lifetime ambition by the time it came around. I’m very proud of my performances in a Lions shirt in pretty much every game bar the first in South Africa in 2009, because it was probably the hardest game I’ve ever experienced, not because of the opposition, but because of the conditions. The effects that altitude had on me on that particular day was something very rare and very unusual to experience.

I think if we had topped off that second Test with a win then it would have been a dream come true. Sometimes you’d much rather win than deliver the performance of a lifetime. What I think I’m most proud about is that in being selected, I was expected to bring an additional physical presence which was missing from the first Test and particularly against the Springboks, who are always the toughest physical test, to be able to deliver that for my team was the most pleasing aspect.

Ticking off a Test match victory for the Lions in the third Test was great. It would have been nicer to have won a series but upon reflection, the crazy thing about that particular game was that I was equally if not more energised than I was in the second Test, running around like a lunatic but I never seemed to be able to actually get my hands on the ball. By the time I’d stumbled over Fourie du Preez, my legs had completely gone from all the running around trying to chase the ball. As they say, I guess that’s just the bounce of the ball, but I was ultimately happy to come away with a win and that was an occasion I’ll never forget.

The Lions is unique in the world of sport. You only have to look at the roll of honour and who’s gone before you to be in awe of it. Therefore when you get the opportunity, you have to pay respect to the shirt by delivering an equally monumental performance. That’s the challenge each and every time. Some are able to live up to it and some aren’t, some deliver the whole nine yards – the Test match, the series win and the performance – and that is the ultimate goal.

Simon Shaw won 71 caps for England, winning four Guinness Six Nations titles and he was also a called up as a member of the victorious 2003 World Cup squad.

Since his retirement in 2013, Shaw has co-founded Love of the Game, a campaign to reduce concussion-related issues across sport. Here, he was speaking to Ben Hart.