You will not find in British rugby two individuals more greatly respected than Ian McGeechan and Gerald Davies, coach and manager respectively to the British Lions in South Africa next year and both with a long and distinguished career of service to the game behind them. So when they say that they hope the players involved with the Lions will enjoy themselves, on and off the field, it tells you something about the modern rugby tour.

In the old, amateur days, rugby tours had a reputation for rowdy behaviour which the game at large perceived as boys being boys, whereas other sports wondered how rugby got away with it. That reputation extended to the highest echelons: the 1968 Lions in South Africa (of which Davies was a playing member) were divided into the "Wreckers" and the "Kippers", and many a hotel bore witness to the activities of the first group.

The remark of Willie John McBride, captain of the 1974 Lions - again in South Africa - when informed that one hotel manager had sent for the police has passed into legend: "Will there be many of them?" he is said to have enquired. But even before the professional era began in 1995, rugby had learned to tone down its more outrageous activities, in the knowledge that the media were taking a greater interest and that sponsors did not look kindly on bad behaviour.

The life of the modern rugby tourist is now very far from beer and skittles. For one thing, he does not see the country he is touring because only the Lions tour in the traditional sense - that is, they play midweek games away from the main centres of population - and such tours happen only every four years. Now it is a relentless round of international matches, designed to prop up the finances of the visited union as much as anything.

There is also the support team attached to every international squad: the demands of four, maybe five, specialist coaches have to be met, the requirements of conditioning coaches, dieticians and media are built into every day. The life of a player is regimented for him and though a social committee remains, whose aim is to find venues for group activities, team meals away from the tour hotel, the nearest Irish pub, you could not necessarily argue that the modern player feels he knows more about New Zealand or Australia or South Africa when he returns home.

In New Zealand, too, it is worse because the visiting team is under scrutiny all the time. It was there that one Sunday newspaper ran a story headlined "Lions are lousy lovers", the allegations of a local lady of the night. New Zealanders know their rugby and are very willing to share their views with visiting players, even if those players are only out for a quick coffee and trying to forget rugby for a while.

It is a smaller, more intimate society and the recognition factor is high. South Africa and, to a greater degree, Australia are different. It is the land of talkback radio, where all kinds of views, some accurate, many not, are aired at large and it does not take long for something of a siege mentality to set in, particularly for young players who have not been trained to cope with a society apparently determined to explore their every flaw.

If it is England visiting, the microscope is tuned even more fine. They, not Scots, Irish or Welsh, represent the old colonial power and stereotypes die hard. If England have enjoyed recent success - by winning the 2003 World Cup, for example, and reaching the final of the 2007 tournament - then the desire to bring them down is even greater.

Hence the desire of McGeechan and Davies to show the Lions to be a pleasurable experience. They want players to be relaxed, to feel at liberty to go out for a beer now and then, to feel they are welcome visitors rather than aliens in hostile territory. There is a balance to be struck between the old ways and the new on both sides, on the part of the players who are privileged to represent their country overseas, should do so with courtesy and take a greater interest in their hosts than sometimes they do, and on the local community to show off their country in the best possible light, not as an inquisition.