Eddie is the Lion King

O'Sullivan, whose record in running the second best team in Europe includes four consecutive wins over England as World Cup holders, has been identified as head coach with Davies as manager.

Their names and that of a forwards coach, understood to be Cardiff director of rugby and veteran of three tours David Young, will be submitted to the four Home Unions. No appointments will be made until the New Year but the Lions committee's choice is expected to gain overwhelming approval.

O'Sullivan, one of Sir Clive Woodward's coaches in New Zealand two years ago, has turned Ireland into one of the top six teams in the world during a six-year reign spoilt only by France denying them a Grand Slam at Croke Park last season.

Davies, whose three tries against the All Blacks in 1971 made him the leading scorer during the Lions' only winning series in New Zealand, made himself unavailable for the 1974 tour of South Africa, partly because of his abhorrence of apartheid which he witnessed on the Lions visit there in 1968. He has been an outstanding ambassador for the game since retiring as one of the finest three-quarters of his generation and is a leading member of the Welsh Rugby Union.

The Lions have decided there will be no repeat of the overblown operation run by Sir Clive during their ill-fated series against the All Blacks in 2005. Then, the biggest squad for any international tour - 47 with five more flown out as reinforcements - backed by an unprecedented management coaching team of 26, resulted in one of the worst series defeats on record. The number, widely criticised at the time, has since been dismissed as something which, as one old Lion put it, 'sounded a good idea at the time - an experiment which didn't work.'

O'Sullivan, a 48-year-old former schoolteacher from Youghal in County Cork, can expect to have a maximum of 35 players at his disposal for a 10-match tour, the shortest undertaken by the Lions to South Africa.

When they last went there 10 years ago for the winning series under the command of Ian McGeechan and Fran Cotton, the tour had been cut to 13 matches from a post-war high of almost twice that number during the amateur era.

The proposed venues for the three Tests are Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. Another Woodward innovation, that of playing a pretour match in the British Isles, will also be scrapped. As far as the tour organisers are concerned, the first Lions Test on home soil, against Argentina at Cardiff in May 2005, was also the last. It had to be played to raise cash to compensate the various club, regional and provincial teams for borrowing their players.

Sir Clive's resignation as England coach in September 2004 left him free to concentrate on assembling his outsized squad before his brief venture into professional football.

O'Sullivan, pre-occupied with the final planning stages of Ireland's World Cup operation, would have to decide to stand down as Ireland coach this time next year rather than combine both duties, which contributed to Graham Henry's resignation as Wales coach nine months after taking the Lions to Australia in 2001.

The Woodward dream of following his World Cup triumph in Australia by beating the All Blacks on their own paddock across the Tasman Sea turned into the most expensive flop in Lions history. No official figure on its overall cost has been divulged but it is understood to have been close to £7million, including more than £1m in insurance premiums and that much again in tour fees.

That the Lions still made a sevenfigure profit despite that enormous outlay speaks volumes for the success of their commercial operation - all the more so considering they were unable to claim any share of the television rights.

They had been sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp as part of the £366m, 10-year deal with the three Southern Hemisphere countries at the advent of professionalism in 1995.

Despite that deal having expired, the Lions must make their next tour without any claim to a television contract worth at least £20m. A clause in the News Corp contract guarantees them protection of broadcasting rights for a further five-year period which means the Lions must wait until they return to Australia in 2013 before exploiting the unique nature of their status on a multi-million pound scale.

The Lions say they have 'come to a satisfactory financial arrangement' with the Springboks for the tour.

The playing policy is in the process of being finalised by the four-man Lions committee, made up of distinguished former internationals Bill Beaumont (England), Andy Irvine (Scotland), Davies (Wales) and Noel Murphy, the last Irishman to coach the touring team, also to South Africa, 27 years ago.