The giants of southern hemisphere forward play licked their lips when pint-sized Ian McLauchlan was drafted into the Lions front row of 1971. By 1997 , they had obviously forgotten the scrummaging lessons he went on to give them.

When Ian McGeechan selected Tom Smith as his loosehead prop to face the Springboks, all South Africa predicted the sort of annihilation that had been the anticipated fate of his fellow Scot McLauchlan in New Zealand a quarter of a century earlier.

The outcome was also the same, as Smith and his propping partner, the equally diminutive (in front row terms) Paul Wallace, won their David and Goliath battle to destabilise the set-piece platform from which South Africa had planned to slay the Lions.

Although he was in his first season of international rugby and had just three caps to his name, Smith's mobility and ball skills in the loose made him ideal for the fast-paced game McGeechan and Jim Telfer aimed to play.

And despite giving away more than a stone in weight and half a foot in height to his front row opponent Adrian Garvey, Smith proved a massively disruptive force in the scrum, using low and awkward body positions to nullify the force of the mighty Springbok eight.

Four years later, in 2001 , Smith was an automatic choice for the Lions once more and again proved a cornerstone of a scrummaging effort that was one of the tourists' greatest strengths. He appeared in all three Tests to take his Lions tally to six.