IAN McGEECHAN’S expected appointment this week as the Lions head coach for the 2009 tour to South Africa has been a bit like watching a presidential race with only one candidate. McGeechan has become the Lions’ torchbearer, the guardian of the spirit that makes it the most famous and unique touring side in any sport, and his record proves that he knows better than anyone how to forge a winning squad from the warring factions of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland within a matter of weeks.

His credentials for the post are unmatched. McGeechan played in all four Tests at centre on the unbeaten 1974 Lions tour to South Africa (and another four in New Zealand in 1977), and coached the Lions to victory in Australia in 1989 and South Africa in 1997. In between, he was robbed of a series win in New Zealand in 1993 by poor refereeing.

It is a hugely difficult task to beat the southern hemisphere big three on their own patches with a scratch side after so little preparation, but it is the chance of a lifetime to work with an inspirational coach like him. I was lucky enough to be selected for the 1989, 1993 and 1997 tours under McGeechan, and they remain the pinnacle of my playing career. Each tour was different, and each time McGeechan adapted to the opposition, yet his core values were always in place and the total experience convinces me that the 61-year-old is again the right man for the job.

“Geech” is not an easy character to compartmentalise. To start with, he is contradictory: he is one of the rugby romantics who loves free-flowing, adventurous rugby, and yet he is also the most ruthless, pragmatic coach I know.

If he detects a weakness in the opposition he will go for the jugular until the series is won, even if it means sticking the ball up your jumper for 80 minutes. He is remorseless in terms of seeking out that weakness, and does the detective work by watching hours of footage of the opposition.

Used to making the most of slender resources with Scotland, he is an expert at nurturing an underdog mentality; he latched onto the South African media calling us “pussycats” in 1997, with the clear message to ram those words back down their throats.

His prematch talks were on the money - how they would come at us, where they were vulnerable, and how to attack them relentlessly. In 1989, he sensed a weakness in the Wallaby pack ahead of the second Test in Brisbane. It was brutal, but it was also the turning point of the series.

In 1997, he had us knocking lumps out of each other in training. The forwards crawled off the pitch at the end of every session. What we didn’t realise was that he had worked out that defence would be the key to stopping South Africa, and he already had the script for that series-clinching second Test in Durban in his head.

His easygoing manner is deceptive - on a Lions tour, what defines him is his passion. He does not talk in soundbites, he is no tub-thumper and I cannot remember seeing him lose his temper, but he is on a mission to win. Sometimes he can be long-winded, giving 40-minute talks when he has got the message across in about four, but he is never boring. In 1997, his verbal picture of how the whole of Britain and Ireland was looking at us in South Africa, and praying that we would deliver, has stayed with me.

Training is a joy with McGeechan. It is very competitive, and he takes you back to the basics, making you do passing exercises over three metres, four metres, five metres and then gradually building it up to 20 metres so that you are running onto the ball at full tilt. It may sound easy, but you realise your fallibility very quickly, and with it comes the recognition of how hard you need to work as Lions to develop the understanding to play Test rugby.

On a Lions tour there is no “us and them” between management and players, and McGeechan stresses that sense of unity. In 1997 he said he would have his head shaved if we won the series and, despite the protests of his wife, he allowed Keith Wood to give him a convict cut in front of the squad. Afterwards he was known as Roland Rat.

McGeechan will go back to a more traditional approach after the 2005 disaster in New Zealand. He was on that tour as a bit-part coach, emerging with Gareth Jenkins as the only successes by keeping the midweek side on the winning trail while Sir Clive Woodward’s Test team fell apart.

McGeechan will not make Woodward’s mistake of selecting players on past reputation. He knows that selecting on merit is the first cornerstone in successful team-building on a Lions tour, as he proved in 1997 by bringing Tom Smith and Paul Wallace in from nowhere as his Test props, and in 1989 by giving an unknown kid like me his Lions Test debut in Brisbane.

The egos are hard enough to deal with in a club side but at international level it is doubled, and when you get to a multinational side such as the Lions it is trebled.

Nobody wants to be left out, and Geech’s gift is that he does not allow anyone to be left out.

As a rookie in 1989 he encouraged me. I remember him saying to me quietly in training: “Keep that going, you’re doing well.” I felt I had every chance of making the Test side, even after he had woken me up following an allnight binge to tell me I was off the bench and in the side to play New South Wales a few hours later.

Word must have filtered through that I’d been on the town, but he let me learn from my mistake - and we won narrowly.

One of his catchphrases is “once a Lion, always a Lion” and that when you bump into a former teammate on the street you are held together by a bond that lasts a lifetime. Geech has played a big part in making that bond so strong, and it is right that he should continue to do so in 2009.