I’m happy with the team I have we’re focused on the series ahead and we’ve analysed all

I’m happy with the team I have, we’re focused on the series ahead and we’ve analysed all the points and all the players. We’re confident of adjusting to whatever combination the Lions throw at us.”
Yesterday was a red letter day for 15 Lions, a half-way house for the six on the bench and a dead letter day for those 14 bystanders left outside in the freezing stuff. Cotton personally wrote to each player and Sam Peters, the party’s administrative assistant, acted as postman at 7.45 in the morning, slipping the different notes under the players’ doors.”We agreed during our week-long get-together in Surrey before the start of the tour that selection was a pretty harsh business if those picking the side simply read out the team in front of a gathering of the entire squad,” said Cotton, who was not exactly noted for sparing emotions during his playing days. “I think this approach is far better as those left out know they can talk to me at any time to find out the whys and wherefores. We wanted to make sure that those disappointed players had an hour to come to terms with that disappointment before they faced everyone else.”The Lions prepared in secret at Stellenbosch University, the cradle of South African rugby, and, irrespective of the mixed feelings among the squad, they trained with a vengeance for more than three hours.

Not that the Springboks were remotely impressed by all the cloak and dagger nonsense anyway. Carel du Plessis, their coach, was yesterday entirely dismissive of the Lions’ naked attempt at psychological warfare: “The way they go about their selection is no concern of mine. “The players know the team but, while there are some very disappointed people in the party, the mood is superb and there is no reason to delay,” he said. The mind games are dead and gone. Fran Cotton, the Lions manager, has abandoned his Chinese whispers approach to this Saturday’s opening Test with South Africa in Cape Town and will instead reveal his line-up tomorrow, some 48 hours in advance of his initial timing. And when they passed a cinema poster in the street depicting the buxom cleavage of Jane Russell, Miriam’s father put his hand over her eyes Thus was Cromwell damned to everlasting fame.

Mr Straw’s children had best avert their gaze before the parental fingers descend.. So unprepared was the young Miriam for her first period that when it arrived she assumed she had cancer. Orthodox Jews from the poorer side of Newcastle, their approach was highly repressive. I admit they are associated with heavy use rather than occasional use, but cannabis is a gateway drug. Some of those who start with cannabis can go on to harder drugs.”Doubtless Dr Stoppard’s parents would have approved.

“There are all sorts of difficulties associated with cannabis abuse. “My generation were too tolerant,” Philip Bean, Professor of Criminal Studies at Loughborough University, has said. “We are reaping the whirlwind now.” Holland and Spain, which pioneered liberalisation, have found that a rise in the use of cocaine and heroin and accompanying social misery followed the decriminalisation of “soft” drugs.The link between drugs and crime is well established, Mr Howarth insisted yesterday. Which would explain why Mr Straw is now so often under attack for peddling “saloon bar prejudices” in the views of old liberals like Roy Jenkins who was Home Secretary throughout the most permissive of those years. Jenkins decries his successor’ s populist approach to law and order, insisting he has a duty to lead public opinion and not follow it.But other liberals of that era have reformed.