Graphic: battle at the breakdown

Next Saturday, we have the arrival of the onrushing train. This tour is very much a fledgling, still finding its way, trying to assess which laws are applied by which referees, trying to assess which players are having bad days or are completely off-form; trying to find combinations.

And yet before any of these matters have been concluded, the first Test against South Africa is upon us. It is possible to lose the first Test and still win the series. In 120 years of these tours, it has happened - once, and once only. It happened in 1989, in Australia and with Ian McGeechan in charge as he is here and now. However, not even the maestro wishes to prove that it was anything other than the exception which proved the rule.

What strengths have the Lions to bank on? First, the excellence of their coaching team, and its unity. McGeechan’s mixture of merry and terse men are clearly working an abrupt magic on this squad, despite the abysmally short time frame. As I have said before, if there is a Test victory out there, then the coaching team will find it, they are more wily and experienced than the home coaching squad.

The Lions also have a very fine scrum, whether or not it is Andrew Sheridan or Gethin Jenkins who plays at loose-head. If we can edge forward those few inches at scrum time and if the referee is not one of those preposterous fools who believes he must even up the scrum rather than allow advantage to the stronger unit, then the Lions could take away some of the legs of the Springboks.

There is also a calm and able midfield triangle, which will almost certainly comprise Stephen Jones, Jamie Roberts and Brian O’Driscoll. They will be up against it in terms of physicality and the sheer size of the South Africans behind the scrum, but in terms of footballing ability then they have it all, and in any case, anyone who fears for the Lions in a physical battle has never seen either the strapping Roberts or the tenacious O’Driscoll, actually play the game.

Perhaps a double, this team has heart. When you hear hard veteran cynics such as Warren Gatland and Graham Rowntree testifying that they have never come across a squad more hardworking and intent, then you realise that whatever the fate of these Lions, then they will not die wondering, they will leave it all out on the rugby pitches of South Africa.

The strengths ranged against the Lions, are immense. There is the suggestion that the Springboks will be undercooked because they have not played as a team so long, and as individuals for some weeks. But there is also a theory to which I subscribe, that at their best, they are likely to prove a substantially better side than that which won the World Cup in 2007.

Their mission is one of passion and history-making. The very fact that the Lions were coming has kept the squad bonded together over the past two years, at a time when both the New Zealand and Australian teams broke up wholesale, moving away to large professional contracts in Europe.

Mostly, the Springboks have stayed, with this one mission and with revenge for 1997, on their minds. It is absolutely ridiculous to expect anything else than that the Springboks will unleash one absolutely unstoppable Test performance against the Lions, as an absolute minimum.

The doubts at fly-half, in the scrum and at full-back have been listed. Yet whether these doubts turn into weaknesses that the Lions can exploit, is a completely different matter. And the size and power of the home team at all points is an anxiety - it is one thing playing a great team on its home paddocks, but it is another living with the knowledge that to play them will hurt, and will force you onto the back foot.

It is popularly supposed that Durban, at sea level, is the best chance that the Lions will ever have in this series. That does ignore the fact that good old Geech, in all his Lions tours as a player or as a head coach, has never lost a second Test, in any country and at any point at or above sea level.

But if the Lions do lose in Durban, then for them to win the series would represent the greatest sporting comeback in British and Irish sport history, and that would be in any sport.

And if they should win next week, upsetting all the odds and gliding past the savage disadvantages of preparation time, unfamiliar refereeing and home country passions, then the odds in the series reduce to nothing much more favourable than evens.

Wit and knowledge and heavy industry is on the side of the Lions. From this distance, however, it would appear that history is not. Nor current form.