‘I’m Lions captain - c u later bye’

Last Sunday week Sam Warburton was visiting his mum and dad with fiancé Rachel and left his mobile phone in the kitchen to charge. Hearing it ring, he went into the kitchen and noticed he had a missed call from Warren Gatland.

“I thought ‘crikey, here we go’, so I legged it upstairs on my own. I didn’t tell them and had a conversation with him in private.”

The Lions captain to be didn’t lie. His first action was to go downstairs and tell Rachel. “There was no way I could keep that in. I told her straight away, and my mum was on the phone, so I just wrote a text message in front of her because she was speaking to a friend.

" 'I'm Lions captain, c u later – bye' was the message, he revealed yesterday.

Sworn to secrecy
Mum Carolyn and dad Jez were sworn to secrecy before he informed twin brother Ben and sister Holly last weekend.

“I told them I only found out a few days earlier so when they find out today that I knew a week on Sunday I might have some words with my brother.”

Warburton will not be fazed by captaining former Lions captains Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell.

“This has happened with Wales. When I was 22, we had guys like Ryan Jones who had captained Wales something like 20 times, Stephen Jones, Shane Williams and I was like ‘Hang about, how am I going to captain these guys?’

“I had some reservations about doing it back then but this time around I’ve learned that rather than be worried about that, those are the first guys you go up to when things do get tough and you can learn on them.”

The new Lions captain will assuredly lean on his two predecessors. “As soon as I meet up with them and we get together they’ll be in a core leadership group that will influence the way the tour goes and believe me, those two guys have a massive part to play.

“It would be very silly of me to ignore two ex-captains. You have to use them to your advantage and they’ll be hugely influential on this tour.”