There are things about northern hemisphere rugby that put it out alone at the top of the world game. Take humour.

A nasty bout of food poisoning behind him right at the start of the 1974 British & Irish Lions tour of South Africa, Welsh hooker Bobby Windsor was advised to eat simple foods for a day or two. “Aye” he said in his unmistakeable South Wales drawl, “I’ll have an omelette.”

‘Which one would you like’ asked the restaurant waitress?

Windsor looked flummoxed. “Why, one of them egg ones, of course” he answered, straight-faced.

What we can say for sure is that the 2009 Lions currently on tour in South Africa — they play the Springboks in the 2nd Test at Pretoria today — have no characters in the class of ‘The Duke’, Windsor’s immortal nickname. But then, as his 1974 fellow Welsh Lion Gareth Edwards said this week “Rugby is changing and not necessarily for the better.

“I celebrated my 21st birthday on tour in South Africa and was sent 21 bottles of wine by a local wine estate to mark the occasion. Sadly, the professional player wouldn’t have time to recognise the ‘noble’ gesture, let alone absorb two cases of wine nor imbibe any real culture. If you train, travel, play and little else, then I am afraid you are striking a nail in the coffin of a Lions tour.”

Too true. But it is not just that particular nail which is threatening future Lions tours. The class of 2009 just aren’t good enough. Indeed, many of them shouldn’t be anywhere near a Lions tour. They do not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Cliff Morgan, Jack Kyle, Tony O’Reilly, Gareth Edwards, Barry John, Mike Gibson and JPR Williams.

They are here solely because there was no-one better qualified, no-one of greater stature and quality left at home. Truly, the cupboard is depressingly bare from a northern hemisphere viewpoint at this particular time, a point the Springboks will surely confirm by clinching the 3-match Test series at Loftus Versfeld later today .

Myriad reasons exist for this state of affairs but one of them is the insidious but steady drift of southern hemisphere players into the northern hemisphere game chiefly for financial profit. The price of this ‘open doors’ policy is starting to be paid by teams such as the Lions.

Ireland have been unable to find a quality fly half for years to mount a genuine challenge to Ronan O’Gara. The fact that Argentinian Felipe Contepomi has held down the No. 10 jersey for Leinster for so many years, is hardly unconnected.

In England, once Jonny Wilkinson started to be bedevilled by injuries post the 2003 World Cup, no quality alternative emerged. Maybe the fact that the English clubs had No. 10s from France, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia in their employment, was also hardly a coincidence.

Harry Ellis is a courageous, determined scrum half, yet the fact that he could win a Lions place from the backwaters of the Leicester second team, tells all regarding the poverty of classy alternatives.

All over the English Premiership and increasingly in Wales and Ireland, the influx of overseas stars which has become a floodtide, is threatening to cause major long term damage to the structure of the game in the British Isles and Ireland. The Lions are just the latest casualty of that state of affairs.

The Lions lost Test series in 2001 in Australia, 2005 in New Zealand and will almost inevitably suffer the same fate on this 2009 tour of South Africa. They have just one true world class player, Brian O’Driscoll who has formed an exciting, wonderfully skilful and entertaining midfield partnership with the young Welsh centre Jamie Roberts.

But a wider question needs to be considered. If the Lions are to be consistently beaten, providing only a token challenge that quickly withers, what value do they have in the modern game? Are they to become solely an excuse for the host union to make riches whenever they tour and up to 30,000 travelling fans from the northern hemisphere enjoy the mother and father of all booze-ups for a month, well away from the Missus and any responsibilities?

Is that the likely fate of the Lions in future years ?

The Lions concept is a marvellous one yet commercial pressures, greedy administrators and selfish selectors are combining to bring about their downfall. On this tour of South Africa, the tourists have not confronted one genuinely full strength team, last Saturday’s Test excepted.

All this is depressing enough but the poverty of the Lions’ play intensifies the sadness and disappointment. Unless you believe in miracles or have consumed too much South African wine, you can hardly think that the Lions will triumph today in Pretoria and again next weekend in Johannesburg to clinch the Test series. 3-0 to the Springboks is the likeliest outcome.

This tour has raised all manner of questions regarding northern hemisphere rugby and the future of the Lions. Truth to tell, there have been some pretty ordinary Lions parties in past years.

But at least then you could argue that was the amateur era, and fortunes ebbed and flowed. You could also point to the 20-plus matches tour schedule that meant the Lions played the length and breadth of New Zealand and South Africa, allowing everyone to see them in the flesh. And, marvellously, the locals turned out.

This truncated 2009 tour, the shortest in Lions history, has been a very different story. From a northern hemisphere perspective it has made for grim viewing.

If this proves, in the fullness of time, to have been the tour that represented the beginning of the end of Lions tours, then all manner of people ought to find themselves in the dock, not least the greedy South Africans who have regarded the whole thing as little more than a money making exercise.

World Champion rugby nations ought to be of a stature that decrees better behaviour and a wider vision concerning the good of the game everywhere, than that sort of self interested attitude.