The British and Irish Lions (formerly known as the British Isles and the British Lions) is a rugby union team made up of players from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The Lions generally select international players; they can pick uncapped players available to one of the four unions, but in recent^[update] years this has rarely occurred.

Combined rugby union sides from the then United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland toured in the Southern Hemisphere from 1888 onwards. The first tour took place as a commercial venture, made without official backing, but the six subsequent visits that took place before the 1910 South Africa tour, the first representative of the four Home Unions, enjoyed a growing degree of support from the authorities.

Great Britain also entered a team at the Olympics Games in 1900 and in 1908, but they were organised separately from the Lions.

In 1949 the Four Home Unions combined formally to create a Tours Committee and for the first time, every player of the 1950 Lions squad was an international before the New Zealand series. The 1950s proved a golden age for Lions rugby, although only in the 1970s did style begin to match the substance of victory in New Zealand and South Africa. Originally, poorly organised Lions teams regularly suffered defeat at the hands of their hosts, but by 1955 the tourists took the matches seriously enough to obtain a 2–2 draw in South Africa. The 1970s saw a renaissance for the side. The last tour of the amateur age took place in 1993.

Warren David Gatland (born 17 September 1963) is a former New Zealand rugby footballer and the current head coach of the Wales national team.

Gatland was born in Hamilton, New Zealand and educated at Hamilton Boys' High School and Waikato University. His first game as an All Black was in 1988, when he is said to have introduced a part-Australian Rules, part-Gaelic football game to the training sessions, which was well received by the other players.

Gatland became the record-holder of the most games for Waikato near the end of the 1994 season. He finished the season with 140 games in total and announced his retirement before the start of the 1995 season.

During the off-season Gatland spent time coaching in Scotland and later coached in Ireland before taking up a position as coach/manager at Leinster. Eventually he went on to serve as director of rugby at Connacht where he achieved enormous success with limited resources. His achievement in guiding them to the quarter-finals of the European Challenge Cup, which included two victories over Northampton Saints, was remarkable.