IT SOMETIMES SEEMS strange that Warren Gatland is coaching the Lions given that he is evidently quite a no-nonsense bloke and the Lions is, well, full of it.
Nonsense, flimflam, bluster – and I mean this in the nicest possible way – the Lions head south every four years on a wave of the stuff.
They have to. How else could you persuade thousands of supporters to spend the price of a small bungalow travelling to the other side of the world – where it’s WINTER?!
How else could you make every decent player in four countries yearn to go on a punishing, six-week end of season tour to a land far, far away – again, where it’s WINTER?!
And how else could Sky Sports convince people not to drop their subscriptions when there’s no football on?
None of this is to knock the Lions.
It’s a tremendous notion, a schoolboy’s daydream made reality, a fantasy adventure tale in sporting form, a wonderful anachronism. It provides fans with years of nourishing speculation, frequent magical moments, and all underwritten by a carefully curated historical legacy.
There are plenty who do knock the Lions: for the investment banks groping their greasy hands over the whole thing, the earnest debates about what-it-means-to-be-a-Lion, the myth-making and portentous guff.
But sport is about guff and myth-making: it’s why Manchester United are criticised for not playing attacking football even as they grimly gather up trophies, like body collectors trudging through a medieval village. Or Kerry footballers praised for their silky technique even if they are deploying Brazilian jujitsu tactics.
Gatland doesn’t seem the type to go in for all the folderol that surrounds the Lions, but that might just make him the perfect coach for them.
So he must have been rolling those droopy eyes into the back of their sockets as the controversy over his six late call-ups was played out last weekend.
Requiring tackle bag holders/bench fodder to fulfil a fixture helpfully arranged in the week of the first test, he reached out to a handful of actual international rugby players who happened to be nearby. But given this is the Lions, poor old Gats got both barrels.
“Where you are shouldn’t determine if you get a Lions jersey,” chastised Sir Ian McGeechan, High Priest of the Church of Lions. Stephen Ferris said the move “devalued the jersey.” Eddie Jones chipped in: “I would like to see it picked on merit rather than geographical proximity.”
The merit in question here was whether, given that 43 players had already been picked for the Lions (the 41-man squad plus absentees Ben Youngs and Billy Vunipola), this lot were actually deserving of the elite label of being called the 44th to 49th best players in Britain and Ireland. While a perfectly valid argument to have, the degree to which people got their knickers in a twist could only happen with the Lions.
“Does it devalue the shirt?” Gatland replied. “I can see people’s point but we are here to win a Test series. That’s my job.” A job made all the more difficult by the schedule imposed on him by financial imperatives in both hemispheres. And he’s devaluing the shirt?
Gatland has seen all this before. Dropping Brian O’Driscoll for the final test in 2013 was transformed from a tough but logical selection decision into a rugby version of the killing of Bambi’s mother.
Mostly this was because of the embarrassing Irish reaction, the dangerous mix of Liveline and sporting controversy once again leaving us in an irrational heap; but there was also some blather about the essence of the Lions being disrespected by treating a former captain so callously.
Of course, he was only trying to win a Test series, which he duly did.
Which brings us to New Zealand, his homeland and a place which has welcomed him back as if he were a cat standing at the door with a dead bird in its jaws.
He’s been hit with all sorts from his countrymen, especially about the brutal style of rugby he’s accused of preferring.
The New Zealand press have spent much of the tour contrasting the lumpen fare the Lions have served up with the All Blacks’ irresistible running game. In this sense, Gatland is the Kiwi Lucifer, the fallen angel cast out of heaven for the sin of not liking offloads.
“The modern game of rugby is about getting across the gainline,” Gatland snapped when the ‘Warrenball’ jibe was thrown at him at a press conference, “trying to get front-foot ball and playing to space if that is possible. If you can get me when things started to change, I don’t know”
It’s as if the locals have been trying to goad Gatland into feeling the weight of Lions lore and taking the ABs on at their own game; but the boy from rural Waikato with the chip on his shoulder is wise to them.
He knows it would be ludicrous to try to mould players from four nations into a sophisticated attacking force like the All Blacks. Instead, Gatland will rely on a dominant pack, two tactically brilliant half-backs, solid midfield defence and hope picking the form three outside backs will give them enough spark to win the series.
It’s a no-nonsense approach, but then, did you expect anything else?
