The Lions will leave for home today asking how much more physical intensity rugby union can endure. They have also suggested that the size and strength of players involved at elite level may have reached a plateau and that sheer bulk should be scaled down in favour of athleticism and skill, not only so that the game can continue to attract new adherents, but also for the welfare of the competitors themselves.

“These have been the most physical three Test matches I have been involved in,” James Robson, the doctor completing his fifth Lions tour, said on Sunday of the series. “I have anxieties about the number of matches we subject our players to in the northern hemisphere and I hope that, at some point, welfare will become a bigger part of player-management.”

During the course of this tour, which reached a climax on Saturday with the record-equalling 28-9 win over South Africa and earned the Lions their first international victory since beating Australia in 2001, they lost eight players to injury and a ninth, Jerry Flannery, in training before leaving London. Adam Jones, the Ospreys prop, faces surgery today on his dislocated right shoulder and will be out for at least six months.

The casualty list also includes Gethin Jenkins, Lee Byrne, Jamie Roberts, Brian O'Driscoll, Euan Murray, Stephen Ferris and Leigh Halfpenny, while Ryan Jones arrived as a replacement and departed within 24 hours after a neurological assessment. The match on Saturday left Matthew Rees concussed - he had to be led off the field in the first half by Gary O'Driscoll, the other Lions doctor - Joe Worsley with a closed left eye that needed hospital treatment, Riki Flutey with a damaged shoulder joint and Martyn Williams with a “stinger” to his shoulder.

Yet this, in the opinion of Robson, 51, the Scotland team doctor, has been the best co-ordinated tour and featured the most responsive coaching panel with which he has dealt. So advanced has the treatment been that one player, who had suffered stiffness of the neck and shoulder plus headaches for the past four years, has now found huge relief. “There are many players going home in considerably better shape than they arrived,” Robson said.

The panel below shows the difference in size of the players who were key ingredients of the 1974 Lions - they went through South Africa unbeaten - and today's Lions. The comparison shows that Willie John McBride, the captain 35 years ago who was on five successive Lions tours as a lock, is smaller than the modern centre. “We are reaching a level where the players have got too big for their skill levels,” Robson said. “They have become a little too muscle-bound and bulky. You may see changes in the physical nature of the players which brings them back a little - I hope so - in order to speed up the game and introduce a higher level of skill.”

The modern coach always emphasises the need to win the collisions, the word “hit” has replaced the tackle, each expression contributing to the gladiatorial nature of international rugby in the new millennium.

The clash between O'Driscoll and Danie Rossouw, the Springbok back-row forward, nine days ago forced both players from the field and it has long been apparent that while players can bulk up as much as they can through gym work and the use of supplements, they cannot strengthen the soft tissues, the ligaments and muscles that hold the body together.

Yet the skill levels are far higher now than during the amateur era, even if the decision-making has not significantly improved. It is possible that a player such as Alun Jones, no midget at 18st 10lb and 6ft 6in, can become the prototype at lock through his athleticism rather than his sheer bulk, or that Tom Croft's pace and ball-handling can become more enviable qualities than his size, 16st 7lb, while leaving room for a delightful little stepper such as Keith Earls (5ft 10in and 14st 7lb).

Robson and Ian McGeechan, the head coach, agree that in South Africa every game is an international match, hugely demanding of players who now return to a season where, even with restrictions on appearances such as exists in England, more high-level games are played than in the southern hemisphere. McGeechan puts Lions tours on a par with World Cups, if not harder, because of the variable playing standard to be seen in global tournaments.

“There should be an integrated model for a Lions year and I hope there is a lot of empathy for what has happened here,” McGeechan said. “Some of the players and coaches from this tour should help to drive the planning for Australia in four years' time.”

¤ Simon Shaw, the London Wasps lock, was banned for two weeks yesterday for kneeing Fourie du Preez in the back late in the first half of Saturday's international against South Africa. Du Preez, the influential scrum half, did not return for the second half. It earned Shaw a yellow card from Stuart Dickinson, the referee, and a suspension matching that awarded to Bakkies Botha, the Springboks lock, a week earlier for the clear-out at a ruck that dislocated the shoulder of Adam Jones, the Lions prop.

Size matters
The sheer bulk of the modern-day player has become so great that fears are growing for their safety, with some even suggesting that action should be taken to counter the trend. The 1974 Lions went unbeaten in South Africa, yet generally they are dwarfed by their 2009 counterparts.

1974 Lions v 2009 Lions
Centre
Ian McGeechan 5ft 9in, 11st 3lb
Jamie Roberts 6ft 4in, 16st 9lb
Scrum half
Gareth Edwards 5ft 8in, 12st 9lb
Mike Phillips 6ft 3in, 16st 3lb
Hooker
Bobby Windsor 5ft 9in, 14st 9lb
Matthew Rees 6ft 2in, 17st
Lock
Willie John McBride 6ft 3in, 16st 8lb
Simon Shaw 6ft 8in, 19st 6lb
Flanker
Fergus Slattery 6ft 1in, 14st
David Wallace 6ft 2in, 16st 2lb