A hotel with no hot water, a squad of nineteen, and the week that made a generation.
The hotel
They were booked into a hotel that had been chosen from a brochure. The brochure was out of date. For six days the squad trained at altitude, ate in shifts and washed in cold water, and by the third day had stopped complaining, which the manager later said was the moment he knew.
The week
Three matches, two of them against sides that had beaten them the year before. Nobody rated them. They did not lose.