Product Description

It will be remembered as one of the great test series in rugby history as the British and Irish Lions came within millimetres of defeating World Champions South Africa on their own turf.

In the land of the big game hunter, this was one that got away just! Three pulsating Test matches of ferocious intensity, compelling and controversial at almost every turn.

Ian McGeechan's heroic squad were decimated by injuries throughout the tour but still claimed a magnificent final Test win in the Springboks' Ellis Park fortress.

The first Test in Durban was lost 26-21 despite a stirring late comeback. The Lions had to win in Pretoria and did everything in their power in a brutal but breathtaking collision. Rob Kearney's early try and Stephen Jones' faultless kicking carried the tourists to the cusp of a magnificent triumph - only for Lion hearts to be broken in the final seconds by the long range boot of the nerveless Morne Steyn.

Paul O'Connell's side regrouped and responded emphatically in Johannesburg, thrashing the Boks 26-9, scoring three tries to none. The series was lost but the performance said everything about this pride of Lions. With action from every game of the tour, extended highlights of the first two Tests plus a bonus disc of the extraordinary final Test match in full - this is the Lions in South Africa 2009.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1647 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-09-07
• Rating: Exempt
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 200 minutes

Synopsis
Includes all the best highlights from the British and Irish Lion's 2009 tour of South Africa.

Customer Reviews

Highlights?
Highlights?

I'm not sure who this DVD is aimed at - certainly not anyone interesting in learning anything about this monumental Lions tour. The highlights of the warm up games are necessarily brief, but that, I hoped, would just give more space for a fuller treatment of the Tests. Not so - the three Tests on the first DVD are given perfunctory treatment, highlights involving no more than one phase leading to a try, or more often to a penalty infringement and the subsequent kick at goal. In a series where set scrums played, I think, a decisive role, we hardly see one. The decisive move to uncontested scrums in the Second test slips in unnoticed and unmentioned.

How to do it better? First, why on earth waste a valuable chunk of the first DVD with highlights of the Third Test when it is there in full on the second DVD. Cut that, and you could have given more time for the first two tests - perhaps enough to show how the games developed.

Second, spend a few bucks on adding some commentary - just enough to point out where things had changed between one clip and the next. Using the real-time commentary alone is just lazy. And would it have killed the producers to put the game clock in the corner of the screen - a glance to see whether the action you are viewing is taking place in the middle of the game or at the end would have been particularly helpful in the warm-up games.

So, sadly, we are left with a DVD that reduces what I remember as some of the most intense, committed and emotional sporting action I have ever seen to a series of un-related 20 second clips.

And why the third test in full, not the decisive second? Obviously because the Lions won that one, even though it was, to an extent, a dead rubber. I guess this answers my initial question - this is a DVD for British boys to buy their Dads for Christmas, to spend a few minutes admiring the great breaks made by Rob Kearney et al. Not one for me - now, where do I find Tests 1 and 2 complete?

Not the best i've seen!!!
Very dissapointed in this DVD, game highlights are very brief, not enough footage of the 1st and 2nd tests. Very poor compared to the 2001 & 2005 tour DVD's.

You get what you're promised.
A good buy for any lions fan, with extended highlights of all three tests and the third test in full. It is perhaps a bit unnessecary to have highlights of test three when it is there in full on the second DVD and that takes up space on DVD 1 which could otherwise have been used for longer highlights of tests 1 and 2. This was slightly frustrating, as they are somewhat brief and don't really do justice to two such exceptional test matches.

That is, however, my only complaint and I cannot imagine any real Rugby Union fan buying this and being dissapointed that they did so. A positive for me was the South African commentary, which is well balanced, informative and for my money, far preferable to the Sky commentary team which had to be endured when watching the matches over here.

A good buy, recommended.