The 1996 Great Britain Lions tour was a

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...

tour by the Great Britain team which took place from September to November 1996. The tour included games in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

Fiji Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, however due to the ongoing

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and with the Australian team under the control of the

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, the team did not play any matches in

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. The tour was generally considered as a disaster, with Great Britain failing to win any games in New Zealand, and several players being sent home early from the tour in order to cut costs.

Touring squad

Great Britain coach Phil Larder selected a 32-man squad to take on the tour. A notable omission from the squad was

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, who took part in the previous three Great Britain tours, but had told Larder he did not have the enthusiasm for another six-week tour. Several changes were made to the initial squad selected, as

Gary Connolly Gary John Connolly (born 22 June 1971) is a former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s as a and for St Helens, Canterbury Bulldogs, Wigan Warriors, Leeds Rhinos and for the Great Britain national si ...

, Lee Jackson and Jason Robinson were informed they would not be allowed to play due to their contracts with the

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. There were also a number of other withdrawals, with John Bentley returning to

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, and

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and Steve McNamara all ruled out due to injury. Former

Wigan Wigan ( ) is a town in Greater Manchester, England. The town is midway between the two cities of Manchester, to the south-east, and Liverpool, to the south-west. It is the largest settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan and is its ad ...

second row forward Denis Betts, who was playing with the New Zealand-based

Auckland Warriors The Warriors are a professional rugby league football club based in Auckland, New Zealand that competes in the National Rugby League (NRL) premiership and is the League's only team from outside Australia. They were formed in 1995 as the Aucklan ...

in the

premiership, made history with his selection. The 25 test veteran became the first player selected to tour while playing in the Australian premiership and not in the English premiership. Larder's assistant coaches on the tour were Clive Griffiths and

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and the tour manager was Phil Lowe.

Andy Farrell Andrew David Farrell (born 30 May 1975) is an English professional rugby union coach and former rugby league and rugby union player. Farrell has been head coach of the Ireland national team since 2019. Farrell earned 34 caps for Great Britai ...

was appointed as the tour captain, with Denis Betts named as vice-captain. Prior to the Second Test against New Zealand, 11 players in the squad were sent home early from the tour as a cost-cutting measure.

Papua New Guinea

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Fiji

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New Zealand

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First Test

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2nd Test

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3rd Test

Aftermath

The tour was considered a huge failure. It was only the second time in tour history that the Lions had suffered a 3–0

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in a Test series against New Zealand (the other being in 1984), and the 12–32 loss in the Third Test was the widest margin of defeat suffered by Great Britain in a Test against New Zealand. Financially, the tour made a loss of £296,000. The lack of success was attributed to the large number of key players who were unavailable for the tour, and the blow to morale caused by sending some of the squad home early. Fatigue was also an issue - due to the British rugby league season switching from winter to summer the previous year, some players had taken part in over 60 games within the space of 14 months.

New Zealand Rugby League The New Zealand Rugby League (NZRL) is the governing body for the sport of rugby league, rugby league football in New Zealand.#SPARC-2009, SPARC, 2009: 13 The NZRL was founded on 25 April 1910 in preparation for a 1910 Great Britain Lions tour o ...

president Graham Carden was blamed for the tour's financial losses, having failed to adequately promote the Test series, resulting in poor attendances. He was eventually forced to stand down the following year. Great Britain did not tour in the Southern Hemisphere again for over 20 years until

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

Notes

References

General * Specific

External links

1996 Great Britain Tour of the Pacific
at ''wigan.rlfans.com''

at ''rugbyleagueproject.org'' {{1996 in rugby league Great Britain national rugby league team tours Rugby league tours of New Zealand Rugby league tours of Papua New Guinea

1996 1996 was designated as: * International Year for the Eradication of Poverty Events January * January 8 – A Zairean cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in the center of the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...

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