Ross Ford may never turn the torrent of images and emotions that he took away from Saturday�s victory over South Africa into any sort of coherent memory but the moment when British and Irish Lions scrum coach Graham Rowntree tapped him on the shoulder is one that will burn brightly

Ross Ford may never turn the torrent of images and emotions that he took away from Saturday's victory over South Africa into any sort of coherent memory, but the moment, late in the first half, when British and Irish Lions scrum coach Graham Rowntree tapped him on the shoulder is one that will burn brightly in his mind for a very long time indeed.

Rowntree had just watched Matthew Rees, the Lions starting hooker, take a heavy knock, and the Welshman was clearly feeling its effects. Even before team doctor Gary O'Driscoll had raced onto the pitch to attend to the stricken Rees, Rowntree had moved into action.

"He told me there might be a problem," Ford explained yesterday. "He just said I should keep myself warm because I might have to go on. I only had time to do a few stretches before I was out there on the pitch."

And so Ford became a fully-fledged Test Lion. With one confident stride across the Ellis Park touchline, he ended a journey that had its beginnings in those winter evenings a dozen years ago when he would watch endless replays of his Living With The Lions video at his parents' house in Kelso. A journey, moreover, on which he once feared he had taken a terrible wrong turning.

That had happened in his first year as a professional at the Border Reivers, when coach Tony Gilbert told the teenage prodigy that he was too small to make it as a loose forward in the senior game and that he should consider a move to hooker. Ford took the advice reluctantly, embarking on an intense and often frustrating programme to master the finer points of a hugely technical discipline and to remould his body into the kind of shape needed to do a shift in the front row.

Would Scotland's present two-team professional set-up have allowed Ford to make that change? There were days when progress was so slow he came close to giving up. There is certainly food for thought in the realisation that Scotland's only 2009 Test Lion would almost certainly have been abandoned by the system that is in place today.

However, the what-ifs were of no concern to Ford yesterday. Having narrowly missed out on a Test appearance in Pretoria last weekend, when the introduction of uncontested scrums kept him on the bench, the 25-year-old was still jubilant about making his debut in a match in which the Lions restored their pride with a performance of enormous character and with a victory as emphatic as the scoreline suggested.

"It was great to get out there, to get that length of time on the pitch and be part of a Lions Test win," he beamed. "It was a really good experience. If you're on the bench it's always good to get some game time, whether it's five minutes or 15, but it's definitely better to be able to get out there and have that kind of extended run.

"I felt I was able to get into the game and really feel a part of it. The lineouts went pretty well, so obviously I was pretty pleased with that. I had worked on that all week and I knew within myself that I could throw in as well as anyone else. I was quite confident going into the game.

"As far as the pace was concerned, it wasn't all that different, just like another international really. The atmosphere in the stadium yesterday was just fantastic and it was great to be able to experience it."

Ford was slow into his stride on this tour, but as many Scots have experienced with the Lions previously, he found his self-belief growing as the weeks went by. With age on his side, he can now target another outing with the Lions to Australia in 2013. Long before then, though, he hopes to have shared the benefits of his experiences in South Africa with colleagues at Edinburgh and Scotland.

As warming as Ford's display was for those Scottish fans whose Saltires flew proudly in the Johannesburg stadium's towering stands, the rather more numerous Irish contingent on the pitch had a greater influence on the result. Rob Kearney and Tommy Bowe were superb in the Lions' defence, the magnificent Jamie Heaslip gave one of the all-time great No.8 performances, and even Paul O'Connell redeemed himself by showing the kind of convincing leadership that had been lacking earlier in the tour.

John Smit, the Springboks captain, had seemed a figure of far more authority going into the game, but he demeaned himself with his involvement in his players' silly gesture of support for banned lock Bakkies Botha. The Springboks players wore white armbands to protest against Botha's two-week suspension for dangerous rucking, the crassest among them adding the word justice'. If they look around their opulent quarters in a plush hotel just north of Johannesburg, they might realise that there are greater iniquities in this country calling out for a spot of moral courage and indignation.

That pettiness apart, the Springboks are deserved winners of the 2009 series, but the Lions were more than deserving winners of this game too, the only stain on their performance being Simon Shaw's clumsy kneeing of Fourie du Preez - an attack that merited the two-week ban he was subsequently given.

Finally, the tourists even enjoyed a few dollops of luck, much of it going the way of Shane Williams, although there was considerable skill, too, in the way he positioned himself to take the wonderful passes from Heaslip and Riki Flutey that brought him his two first-half tries.

Ugo Monye, one of the real characters of the past few weeks, dashed 90 metres after intercepting a pass near his own line to score the tourists third try. It was a flamboyant flourish for a fabulous match, an engrossing Test series and a tour that had provided a thunderous restatement of the importance of the Lions.