Holmes knows what it is like to miss out

AS Europe's supreme scrumhalf of his generation, Terry Holmes had earned the right to emulate the greatest of them all as a Lion against South Africa and New Zealand.

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A decade after Sir Gareth Edwards’ constant presence against both throughout successive four-Test series in the Seventies, his Cardiff and Wales successor had been earmarked for all eight matches against the same heavyweight superpowers in the early Eighties.

At the end of a week when the Lions lost a pair of leading contenders for the Test 23 in Tomos Williams and Eliott Daly, Holmes would have had a clearer idea than anyone of their joint anguish at having to make the lonely journey home before the real action begins.

He made the same traumatic trip twice, the victim of different injuries in different tours: South Africa in 1980, New Zealand three years later when Cardiff's Colossus stood at the peak of his powers at the age of 26. Unlike the vast majority of his contemporaries, Holmes offered the Lions two players in one: a scrumhalf with all the tools of a demanding trade and the physical stature to double up as an auxiliary back row forward whenever the situation demanded.