Many years ago, we had a Geography teacher who was captain and lock forward for Cornwall. At the time, one of his team mates was a certain 'Stack Stevens' who had recently represented the Lions in Australia. The aforementioned Mr Stevens, no doubt doing a favour for our teacher, was invited to come and talk to us about leadership in sport and how to maximise talent..... blah de blah [that is how it sounded for those of us who hated rugby].
Said Mr Stevens then proudly showed us his Lions shirt and regaled us with tales of getting your head kicked in by various huge Aussies. One of my classmates was the captain of Cornwall's under 16's [an excellent player who went on to represent the Cornish 1st XV] . He asked if he could try the shirt on, and Mr Stevens said in no uncertain terms:-
The only way you get to wear one of these is to f***** earn it son'.
