Gareth Edwards may have been voted the best rugby player of all time but it cut little ice with the marketing team gathered in Soho yesterday to launch the 2005 Lions shirt. "We had hoped to get Bill Beaumont to come along," one marketing man said, "but Gareth Evans is here."

Edwards, capped 10 times by the Lions and part of the 1971 party that is still the only Great Britain and Ireland team to win in New Zealand in 100 years, was alongside Sir Clive Woodward to unveil the skimpy 2005 number. It comes in two styles - figure-hugging for the backs, more roomy for the forwards - and in eight sizes.

Adidas has worked on the fabric - designed to keep the heat out for Britain's Olympic athletes in Athens - to make Woodward's men comfortable in the New Zealand winter next year. It will be part of 60 pieces of kit issued to each player.

"On my first trip with the Lions - to South Africa in 1968 - we weren't issued with kit as such," said Edwards, 57. "We were given a voucher to buy a couple of pairs of boots and a couple of shirts.

"They came in two sizes and had to fit everyone. I remember looking across the changing room and Gerald Davies [whippet-like wing] looked like he was wearing a nightgown. It came down to his knees and there were great folds of cloth under his armpits.

"And the weight of the damned things once you'd had a soaking; we [had] wanted one all our lives and it was hanging on us."

Edwards knows what happened to the three shirts he had in New Zealand. One hangs in the Arms Park museum - "alongside Barry John's boots" - he has one himself, and the third he swapped with his opposite number, Sid Going. "I'd like to think he's still got it; I've still got his. I'm not saying it meant more, but in those days the only guys who got a British Lions shirt were the ones that had earned them. There were no replicas so it was more special, more personal, and people cherished them."

Woodward's 44-strong squad - there were 33 players in 1971 when the Lions won 2-1 with one game drawn - will have new kit for each match. They will also benefit from a 26-strong back-up team which includes seven coaches, two fitness coaches, a kicking coach, two doctors and three physios.

On the 1971 Lions tour, which had started in Australia, Edwards said: "We didn't have coaches as such at that time. I suppose Carwyn James was really the first for the Lions. Before that you just had assistant tour managers.

"Doug Smith, our tour manager, would put a tracksuit on - he wouldn't have got into one of these jerseys - and doubled up as doctor because he was one, and we picked up a local physio. He was fantastic, but just a rub-a-dub-dub man. Just basic stuff. If you had an injury you had to get a taxi and go down the hospital.

"Our kickers looked after themselves. Barry John used to have half a dozen goes at the end of training just to see if his timing was on. He started kicking on the second game in Sydney. I used to kick for Wales, but it really was a case of whoever fancied it. It was wet and windy and when we got a penalty about 40 yards out everyone just looked at each other. Barry stepped forward, put it over."

Woodward, though, leaves less to chance. His team manager, Louise Ramsay, is on a recce and Woodward has seven years of notes on New Zealand from his time with England. Next week he will begin working with Wales as they prepare to face the All Blacks next month during their European tour.

By the time Graham Henry's side fly home, Woodward will also have been involved with France and Italy before naming two complete sides, plus replacements, for next June and July.

"There's a little bit of envy," said Edwards. "But it was enough for the time. Did we used to have a play book? Heavens no. We just used to read the papers and see where we went wrong."

Then and now

Lions v All Blacks

Numbers
1971: 33 players plus a team manager and coach
2000: 44 players plus a team of 26 managerial and medical staff

Itinerary
1971: 26 matches
2000: 11 matches spread between two squads of 22

Coach
1971: Welshman Carwyn James, with 13 compatriots in the squad
2000: Sir Clive Woodward. Guided England to the World Cup in 2003
Selection
1971: A committee with representatives from each country
2000: Woodward will be 'the sole selector, the voted final arbiter'

Catering
1971: Players had to use food vouchers
2000: The Lions will have their own chef