South Africa coach Peter de Villiers has expressed his shock that the captains of England, Scotland and Wales have been left out of the British And Irish Lions squad.

Lions coach Ian McGeechan chose a 37-man squad but left out Steve Borthwick, Mike Blair and Ryan Jones.

The one thing that gobsmaked me was that the leaders of three home nations weren’t included in the squad, de Villiers told BBC Radio 5 Live.

The guys that play under those guys have a high regard for them.

He added: Those are the guys that can stand up in
Lions Rugby meetings and try to work out small niggles and things that can evolve on a long trip like this.

De Villiers also believes that the decision to appoint Ireland 2nd Row Paul O’Connell as Lions captain ahead of regular Ireland skipper Brian O’Driscoll could be damaging. Any chance here that they are trying to make the mood in the camp sour?

Brian O’Driscoll was the skipper of the last Lions team, even though he got hurt, and he was the captain of the most successful Six Nations team this year. That’s a second big revelation.

Additionally, De Villiers was sceptical of McGeechan’s choice to pack his team with physically imposing players who could contend with the formidable Springboks.

If McGeechan wants to sit down and try to match the Boks then I think that is the mistaken , he said.

If he wants to say ‘this is our strong point, this is how we want to play the game, these are the people who can do the job for me’ then I can justify any selection he has made.

But I will not sit down and say ‘they are going to do this, so We should do this’. We am more focused on what I want to do and I will find the genius and the players to do the task for us.

The tour officially began on 30 May with a game against a Highveld XV with the British Lions Tour Tests against the Springboks starting on 20 June.

Irish Star Number 8, Jamie Heaslip prepared for his second match with the British & Irish Lions Rugby Team against the Sharks on Wednesday night by swimming with the real McCoy. The Leinster and Ireland No 8 went snorkling with metre and a half long sharks in Durban at the weekend to get a taste of things to come later on this week. And having enjoyed his first encounter of swimming with the ocean’s most deadly creatures, he is now planning on getting up close and personal with some Great Whites when the tour moves on to Cape Town.

“Shane Horgan told me before I went on tour that there would be plenty of chances to do different things and that I should take them all,” said Heaslip. “I jumped at the chance to go swimming with some sharks when we arrived in Durban and it was great. You get a few seals in Irish waters, but certainly not sharks.

“We went down in a cage to begin with and then we were able to swim alongside them. The guides said they were safe, but they told us not to get too close. “Hopefully, in Cape Town we will be able to get into the cage and mix with some Great Whites. That would be unbelievable.”

Before then, though, Heaslip got to run the gauntlet of South African rugby’s own Sharks team. It was his second start on tour and another good game has pushed him further ahead of Wales’ Andy Powell for the No 8 spot in the Test team.

“Springbok rugby is very strength driven and they like to kick the ball. But they are big boys, they run hard and they are very uncompromising at the breakdown,” he added.

“We have to be more competitive at the breakdown because if we can get quick ball for our backs they can do some real harm.”

The South African Springboks have long been known as one of the most physical – some would say filthy – teams in international rugby. There certainly have been some unpleasant incidents concerning South African teams over the years, none more so than the 1974 Lions tour when the British And Irish Lions famously employed their “99 call” to combat the Springboks’ off-the-ball tactics.

In recent years however, the International Rugby Board has done a good job of cleaning up rugby, assisted by advances in video know-how, the sin bin, and the use of citing commissioners to mete out punishment for foul play after the match. Stuff still happens – rugby is a confrontational contact sport after all – but rarely on the scale seen here.

Teams and players are normally a lot more circumspect these days – England’s 2002 demolition of the Springboks at Twickenham clearly demonstrated the result of a red card early in a match. England would in all probability have won that match anyway, but certainly not by the record score they achieved if the Boks had not had to play the majority of the match with 14 men.

Data suggests that even having a player receive a yellow card and being sent to the sin bin for 10 minutes usually results in points against his team, often from the accompanying penalty, but also from the physical advantage it gives the opposition. More often than not the team with 14 men concede a try in the ten minute period. And even if points aren’t scored within the period of the suspension, it’s likely that the extra exertion expended by the rest of the team to cover for the missing player takes a toll later on in the match.

But while we will hopefully not see any punching or blatant foul play during the 2009 British Lions tour, physical dominance of the opposition is still a fundamental of the game, and we should expect no quarter to be asked or given by either side. In recent years the Springboks have not often strayed too far from their customary pattern of play, based on a solid foundation of forward play to get over the advantage line and creating space out wide for their classy backs. When they have experimented with playing a more expansive game, they have invariably come unstuck.

It remains to be seen what tactics the British Lions of 2009 will utilize, but they will need to at least match the Springboks in the scrums, line outs and at the breakdown if they are to control the play. Indeed, the legendary Willie John McBride (captain of the victorious 1974 Lions), has recently gone on record stating that he believes the scrum holds the secret to success for the 2009 Lions Rugby Team.

Whatever the strategy, expect a brutal physical confrontation, with the team that gains the upper hand standing a good chance of victory in the British Lions Tour Test series.