Dallaglio: I played to honour my sister – it led to unforgettable Lions memories

For many fans of the British & Irish Lions, the most memorable tour dates back to 1997 and the titanic clashes with then world champions South Africa as part of a stunning 2-1 series success.

In fact, it’s a series remembered fondly and in detail even for avid rugby and sport followers for whom the tour was before their time – the immense Living with Lions fly-on-the-wall documentary produced from the tour a huge success as a genuinely superb piece of sporting access and insight.

Back then, Lawrence Dallaglio was a 24-year-old flanker who held just 11 caps for England having made his Test debut in November 1995. He would go on to feature in all three Tests vs the Springboks and ultimately become a legend of the sport, winning a Rugby World Cup in 2003, four Six Nations championships, two Champions Cups and five Premiership titles.

He didn’t set out to achieve in rugby from an early age, though. In actual fact, it was extreme family grief and the emotional necessity to try something new and different that kickstarted his journey on the road to achieving everything in rugby union.

Born in London to an Italian father and mother of Irish descent, Dallaglio’s life choices into adulthood became shaped by the tragic death of his sister Francesca when both were teenagers.

“I loved sports at school: football, rugby, cricket, but I didn’t particularly lean in any direction,” Dallaglio tells Sky Sports. “I went to a school called Ampleforth College, which was a big rugby school, because my mum took me out of state school and put me into an independent one.

“I lost my sister in the Marchioness riverboat disaster in 1989. I was 16, she was 19.

“I left Ampleforth that summer because I was in a very bad headspace for about a year or so where I was really struggling, my parents were struggling. I got to 1990 and thought: ‘I need to sort myself out, because I’m heading in the wrong direction.’

“I had enjoyed rugby at Ampleforth, so I decided to join a rugby club. I opened the newspaper and Wasps happened to be the one that grabbed the headlines so I got on the tube and went there.

“I needed a family, a community, a sense of purpose, of belonging. Rugby was only a Tuesday and Thursday night in those days, so I turned up there very much a loner and I was welcomed with open arms.

“Slowly but surely my mum and dad started to come and watch me play and that helped us to rebuild our lives, really.

“My why was around purpose and honouring the memory of my sister. I never thought in my wildest imagination it would go on to become a job.

“I went to university, graduated and became a chartered surveyor, and then in 1995 the game went professional. I started and played six years as an amateur and then 13 as a professional – or what we thought was professional then.

“I wouldn’t swap it for the world.”

‘Everything is set up to fail on a Lions tour, but it’s the pinnacle’

By 1997 professionalism had firmly taken hold of rugby, with the Lions’ tour of South Africa broadcast on Sky Sports for the first time.

Dallaglio was named among a rather inexperienced 35-man squad to tour – only six players had previous Lions experience – and expectation they would trouble the fearsome Springboks was little to none.

“It was special. There was no real Lions history or culture ingrained into us, but we were in safe hands with the likes of Fran Cotton, Ian McGeechan and Jim Telfer. We had a special management group.

“Having that trio particularly, who obviously have that history with the Lions intellectually, tactically, emotionally, they were able to select and push all the right buttons in terms of that tour.

“What’s so unique about a Lions tour is everything is set up to fail. You’re picked to play with players from different backgrounds, countries, environments, and you really only have about a week together as a team. You fly to the other side of the world to play against one of the best teams in the world, and in those days with their referees as well up until the Test series.

“I recognised how special it was when I walked into the room for the first time at the Oaklands Park Hotel and we came together as a group.

“My memories of the early weeks is huge competition for places. Every single player in that squad is an enormous character in their own right. They’re all No 1s in their own country. It’s like the special forces of rugby.

“I always said to myself, in order to get to the top of world rugby you’ve got to go to New Zealand and win and to South Africa and win. It’s being able to beat the two best sides in the world in their own backyard.

“It was a special tour and in my own Lions journey it’s obviously the one I remember very fondly because it was my first, we won the Test series and I was 24-years-old.

“I watched Living with Lions the other day. It was probably the first fly-on-the-wall documentary that transcended all sport, and became the benchmark for it.

“A lot of people across different sports have said what an amazing documentary it is. Luckily, we didn’t actually have a clue the cameras were there, because if we did maybe things would have been different. It just showed what a wonderful group of personalities we had.”

For Dallaglio, the impact of such a monumental achievement against the odds in 1997 with the Lions in South Africa had a tangible, profound effect on the remainder of his rugby playing career.

“I just remember it being an awesome challenge, touring South Africa. I’ve always said getting selected for the Lions is the pinnacle.

“I had not long been picked for England. Just to be in the mix with so many good players to share your intellectual property as a rugby player, as a man, in such a short space of time, for it to come together, it’s right up there in terms of an experience.

“I can’t underestimate what winning in South Africa did for me and that group. As a moment in time, it really was great, and you become part of a very proud group to represent the Lions and become a winning Lion, because there is a difference.

“Once you’ve been and won in South Africa as a 24-year-old, anything and everything in your rugby career is possible. There is no limit to your potential I promise you, and I don’t mean that in an arrogant way. You leave South Africa having beaten the world champions at altitude, at sea level, in a Test series, and had a lot of fun along the way. I didn’t win the World Cup for another six years, but I felt on top of the world at that moment.

“I always use that as a reference point in my career, because I thought: ‘These guys are the best in the business.’ There’s never a bad time to measure yourself against South Africa. If you can win there, you can do anything. For me, it was really a launchpad.

“It puts hairs on the back of your neck up. When you look at previous Lions in your position, it really does make you feel like you’re becoming part of something, of a very unique history, and you have an opportunity to add to that legacy. We knew we were actually the only people in South Africa who expected us to win.

“I’ve won a Rugby World Cup, Premierships and European Cups, but the Lions winning in South Africa was my greatest ever rugby experience.”

‘It was a miracle I travelled with Lions in 2001 – I shouldn’t have gone’

Twice more over the next eight years Dallaglio was handed the honour of British and Irish Lions selection, yet on both he was robbed of the full experience as a more senior pro due to serious injuries suffered in the early weeks.

In 2001 to Australia, Dallaglio was in the prime of his career before suffering a knee injury playing for Wasps in their final fixture of the season.

It was an injury so severe, in fact, he admits he should never have boarded the plane Down Under.

“It’s a miracle I went, really. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have gone. I was just desperate to go on the tour.

“I tore my ACL, but it wasn’t completely torn. If I’d had any self-preservation in those days, you’d have gone: ‘Listen, it’s half torn, it’s going to be very difficult for you to function.’

“Anyway, I rehabbed, rehabbed, rehabbed and passed a pretty significant fitness test to actually go.

“Graham Henry [Lions head coach] really wanted me on that trip and said: ‘Look, if it means you miss the first two or three games, I’m happy and willing to go with that.’ As it turned out, if you’re not training every day with the Lions it makes you feel like an outsider, quite rightly.

“You don’t feel like you’re contributing to a group that’s all about equality. I found it a very difficult trip and it unravelled for me against New South Wales where Phil Waugh put me out of my misery and actually snapped the rest of the ACL with a nice side-on tackle. The rest is history. Sometimes it’s just not your time.”

Instead, Dallaglio – unable to pay for his own flight home and with nothing else put in place – hired a camper van with other injured Lions in Phil Greening, Dan Luger and Mike Catt in a bizarre turn of events, taking in a frustrating eventual 2-1 series defeat to the Wallabies.

“We were just following the tour as fans, and had the most immense time out there,” he says. “The Lions should have won that series, but it was one of those that got away from us.”

‘After broken ankle and clash with drunk surgeon, I was stuck in NZ for weeks’

In the summer of 2004, Dallaglio announced his retirement from Test rugby at the age of 32, citing “the brutal demands of international rugby.”

As such, he was a shock inclusion within Clive Woodward’s massive 44-man Lions squad to tour New Zealand a year later. The very first tour fixture in the country vs Bay of Plenty in Rotorua saw disaster strike again in terms of injury, however.

“2005 for me was a different memory. We’d won the World Cup and I’d had the most amazing few years with England culminating.

“I retired from international rugby because I thought no one was really helping to manage the workload of people like me, and I’d been playing back-to-back rugby for six seasons with no rest. I was fed up.

“I was picked by Clive Woodward when I wasn’t playing Test rugby. He said to me: ‘I’m not too concerned. I know the reasons you retired and it wasn’t because you weren’t good enough.’

“Everyone looks back at the Clive Woodward Lions tour and obviously it didn’t go well, we lost 3-0.

“I lasted 20 minutes in the first game. It was very tough. I got my studs caught in the ground and snapped my ankle.

“We were in Rotorua and I was stretched off the field. We arrived at hospital and it was empty. It was like a ghost town because everyone was at the game and they’d left this young junior orthopaedic surgeon in charge and he came running out, literally foaming at the mouth and said: ‘Mate, I’ve just seen it on the telly, I reckon you’ve dislocated your ankle!’

“I was lying there with my ankle at three o’clock. He then wanted my kit because he was so excited. I was almost laughing, and it’s sort of dark humour but I said to him: ‘You go and get me morphine, you can have the entire kit bag.’

“The surgeon came back from the game and you could smell he’d obviously had a couple of pints. He said: ‘We’ll operate on you in the morning.’ I looked at Gary O’Driscoll [Lions doctor] and said: ‘With all due respect, I want whoever operates on Jonah Lomu and Sean Fitzpatrick.’

“We drove down to Auckland the next day and I had an operation with the leading surgeon. He woke me up the following day and said: ‘Your Lions tour’s over as you’ve got a nice piece of Kiwi metal in your leg with six screws.’

“He then said there was good news and bad news. With a good wind, I’d be back playing in about five months. The bad news was: ‘You’re going to have to stay in Auckland for the next five weeks. I can’t let you fly home because of the risk of swelling and infection.’

“The Lions literally left town the following day to Christchurch. The tour goes on.

“I was on crutches, in a big plaster. I didn’t even have any clothes that weren’t Lions kit and had to hobble around Auckland for five weeks on my own, which was a cathartic experience for me because I was nearly 33 and wondering whether I’d play rugby again, to be honest with you.”

Dallaglio would go on to play three more full seasons at the top level in fact, winning a Heineken Cup with Wasps in 2007, Premiership in 2008 and coming out of retirement with England to play until the 2007 World Cup run to the final in Paris, finishing on 85 Test caps.

For the man who achieved it all in the sport, though, his Lions summer of 1997 remains unforgettably at the top.

“Certainly from my rugby career and memories, that nine weeks we had in South Africa was the best experience of my life.”

Sky Sports will exclusively show the 2025 British and Irish Lions tour of Australia, with all three Tests against the Wallabies and six warm-up matches to be shown exclusively live.