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Living With The Lions Sports Travel

The Perse School Cambridge has just returned from a very successful tour to South Africa.

They chose to follow an original itinerary by avoiding Cape Town and the Garden Route and it certainly paid off as their overland trips showed them the country and gave them a valuable insight into the country and people of South Africa.

With the country still recovering from Football World Cup fever the Perse began their tour in Pretoria enjoying the excellent sports facilities at the High Performance Centre, which had been the base for the Argentinean Football team a few weeks earlier.

After impressive displays on the pitch in Pretoria & Nelspruit the boys then enjoyed some R&R in the Kruger before heading south through Battlefield country to the Drakensberg Mountains.

More rugby followed with some great results for the Perse before the tour ended in the Durban area and included a fixture against the impressive Glenwood School. One highlight was the day spent at Gods Golden Acre, a centre that provides support, education and guidance to vulnerable & abandoned children. The day was a mix of rugby, entertainment and hard work with the boys lending a hand to help out with some of the maintenance jobs at the centre.

We were delighted to be involved in organising the tour for the Perse and well done on ending the tour having won 10 of the 16 games played. No mean feat in South Africa.

Rachel Barber

Until England’s untimely collapse on the second morning of the First test v Pakistan, it looked like Morgan’s first test century was setting us up for a big total! Nonetheless it is great to see this young talent making it now in the test side and I personally hope we will be seeing a lot more of him in Australia.

The Perse School from Cambridge have been enjoying a fantastic tour of South Africa as can be seen from the blog we created for them - https://lwtlperse2010.wordpress.com/

I have been fortunate enough to see the boys in action and meet the parents who too are really having a superb time so far.

I caught up wih the Perse in Mooi River where they played Weston Agricultural. 3 hard fought matches saw the Perse victorious in two with the 1st XV narrowly losing 11-15 in a very physical yet clean encounter. What a great touch it was when the Weston supporters sang God Save The Queen and the South African National Anthem prior to kick-off. It really set the scene.

Next on the fixture list was one of South Africa’s top rugby schools, Glenwood. This was the the one the Perse boys were waiting for and although they came full of spirit and determination they were out muscled and outclassed in all three games. Nevertheless the boys thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and I am sure they learned alot from the experience. I am not sure what these Glenwood boys eat but they were BIG!!

Next we head to Kloof High School and the boys will be looking forward to hopefully finishing the tour on a high.

More to follow.

Early news out (just yesterday) and I am trying to find out more, but we are hearing that the Lions  tour to Australia will start with a match played in Hong Kong. It will be an interesting development to this fantastic team. Having said that, I had previously been told it may go via Argentina on its way to Oz which I think would have been a more interesting stop both in terms of the rugby and the country as a whle. Anyway, more news to follow as soon as we hear.

As the football world cup gets under way this weekend in South Africa this weekend the world will be watching with interest to see mainly how the country copes with the tens of thousands of football supporters descending on their beautiful country. I truly hope its an enormous success that galvanises the country to go on to bigger and greater things as it really is an great place to visit. I believe it will show to the world that it can organise, build and successfully manage such a prestigious event; but it will have been let down by the over greedy governing body, in this case FIFA or its tournament spin-off, MATCH. It is MATCH that centrally controlled virtually all of the accommodation available in South Africa promising hoteliers full rooms for a month or more at high prices. However it is also MATCH that has been releasing in some cases as much at 70% of the rooms unsold with only weeks to go before the tournament having failed to fill them at prices sometimes three times higher as the high season prices. To take this to conclusion, UK based official agents like Thomas Cook for instance ended up offering 5 night packages to see England play USA for £2500 which they later reduced to £970 just to get some adequate take up. Similarly, Events International trip to the World Cup Final is reduced from £7999 to £4999 this weekend, some saving! We arent so active in football but the Rugby World Cup is in severe danger of heading in the same direction, putting off willing travellers or pushing them towards doing it themselves - indeed why wouldnt you faced with these prices? A 3 week trip with England Rugby Travel to see the quarters through to the final currently costs over £8000 per person (plus tickets)! We sold this same holiday to Australia in 2003 (when England were somewhat better than they are now) for less than £3000 plus the cost of the match tickets. Aren’t we supposed to be emerging from a global recession? Hotels we are talking to either think they are full because the official agents have placed bookings with them or are charging between 4 times and in one case 8 times their normal prices. I don’t blame anyone for trying to do make a little bit of profit but it just seems to have got completely out of hand.

We would rather not be involved in offering packages at such incredibly high prices and we beilive that prices will only fall over time. We are using our contacts to come up with some alternatives as best we can at prices we are more comfortable with, otherwise we will actually advise keen rugby fans to just hold off and see what happens. To me, prices for this trip will go only one way - down. We hope to offer our supporters packages sub-£4000 that will enable fans to follow their country for up to 17 nights whilst still enjoying the camaradary that goes with a great tour like this. Watch this space for more news…..

We are very excited to hear that our very own Lions host, Robert Jones (Wales and Lions) has been asked to join a team of 15 ex-Wales captains to climb Kilimanjaro this September. Anoether of our previous hosts Ieuan Evans will also be making the climb and we wish them both all their best with their charitable endeavours. When I have more news about the charities we will place the links on here.

Good luck training!

Its early days at the moment but there is talk of an LWTL 2009 Lions reunion taking place before the Wales v England game on Friday 4 February, 2011. Watch this space for more news, but if all goes well there will be a pre-match party before the game and hopefully maybe even a game to watch! Rob Jones and John Bentley have both offered to dust off their boots so at this stage, anything looks possible!

England have ended a 35 year drought by winning the World Twenty20 title in Barbados.  The Australians batted first and struggled to 8-3 thanks to some diciplined bowling and some great fielding by England. The danger men Watson and Warner were out and England were in the driving seat. The Aussies regained their composure thanks to the likes of Michael Hussey and Michael Clarke posting a respectable 147-6 which was certainly a competitive score considering the dreadfull position that they were in at the start of the innings.

The Aussies started their fielding attack well claiming the wicket of Lumb off the bowling of Shaun Tait. But then with Kieswetter and Pietersen at the crease the england batting attack was in full flow reaching the 100 partnership off just 62 balls! Both batsmen went out rather cheaply giving England fans something to worry about and the Aussies hope but this was short lived as Paul Collingwood and Eoin Morgan made sure there was no late drama reaching the required score with 18 balls to spare.

This victory sets the 2010 Ashes Series up perfectly, to see the Official Living With The Lions Packages to Australia please click here.

England strolled to a seven-wicket win over Sri Lanka in the World Twenty20 semi-finals to reach an ICC tournament final for the first time since 2004.

Led by Stuart Broad, the bowlers excelled in St Lucia with only Angelo Mathews (58) making any sort of contribution in a total of 128-6.

Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb then put on 68 for the first wicket to put England firmly on course.

New dad Kevin Pietersen made 42 not out as they eased home with 24 balls left.

England’s eyes will now turn towards Sunday’s final in Barbados, potentially against this winter’s Ashes opponents Australia, should Michael Clarke’s unbeaten team put paid to Pakistan’s defence of the trophy on Friday.

England have never won a major global tournament, a statistic their fans are keen to see consigned to history, but Paul Collingwood’s side will go into the final full of confidence after an impressive all-round display.

Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara looked pleased to have won the toss as he elected to allow his batsmen to take first use of what transpired to be a blameless wicket at the Beausejour Stadium.

England knew it was vital to remove Mahela Jayawardene, who has been in red-hot form in the Caribbean, as early as possible.

And everything went entirely according to plan for Collingwood’s men as two wickets had already fallen by the time Jayawardene departed to Broad’s first delivery.

Broad, summoned up to bowl the fifth over after Tim Bresnan and Ryan Sidebottom had shared the new ball, bowled a delivery just back of a length outside off-stump, seaming away a fraction. Jayawardene’s thin defensive edge was easily snapped up by wicketkeeper Kieswetter.

By then, the 39-year-old Sanath Jayasuriya had been caught at second slip off Sidebottom, before Tillakaratne Dilshan was superbly held at deep square leg by a diving Luke Wright off Bresnan.

With Jayawardene following the procession back to the pavilion, England were already firmly in control, and Collingwood now turned to eight overs of solid spin bowling from Graeme Swann and Michael Yardy.

Sri Lanka’s batsmen could not take too many risks, and one of the few that was taken, Sangakkara’s lofted off-drive off Swann, resulted in an easy catch for Pietersen

he return of Broad and Sidebottom presaged a curious period of play withbatsmen flailing desperately at bouncers of varying speed

On one occasion, Chamara Kapugedara, who was eventually put out of his misery when driving Broad to mid-off, threw his bat out of his hands all the way to square-leg umpire Aleem Dar.

Mathews, who hit Sri Lanka’s only six, finally began to make sense of England’s tactics and, with the scoring choked to the tune of 96-5 off 17 overs, took Bresnan for 14 runs in the 18th, an over made more profitable by the Yorkshireman’s three wides.

But with no boundaries coming off either of the last two overs, there was little momentum for Sri Lanka to take into the England chase.

Sangakkara tried five different bowlers in the first five overs, to little avail.

Kieswetter and Lumb had the luxury of having a couple of overs to play themselves in, and once they had done so played some meaty shots to put pressure on the Sri Lankans.

England’s openers did get lucky on occasion - umpire Simon Taufel rejected a perfectly good lbw appeal by Mathews against Kieswetter when the right-hander had made 16, while Lumb only avoided being run out on 11 when Ajantha Mendis made an embarrassing mess of taking Lasith Malinga’s return.

Jayasuriya’s exploratory over saw both batsmen hit handsome sixes, though Kieswetter finally departed to a Malinga yorker.

Lumb should also have been caught on 23 by substitute fielder Nuwan Kulasekara, running in from long-off, in the ninth over.

He stayed to carve Thissara Perera over the off-side for two boundaries, before being bowled round his legs by the same bowler.

Pietersen announced his arrival back in the Caribbean - after a quick visit to London to attend the birth of his son - by hammering Suraj Randiv for an enormous six.

Skipper Collingwood, yet to make a significant score in the tournament, made just 10, but Pietersen continued to playbrilliantly , hitting Malinga for another six with what was little more than a simple flick over midwicket.

A straight drive along the ground for four off the same bowler ended the game in perfect fashion for an extremely focused England side.

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