Gatland’s absolutely blown it
Calling All Blacks dirty will haunt him
There’s nothing quite like a Lions tour to taint a coaching career. Graham Henry reckoned the 2001 tour to Australia just about finished him off. It certainly didn’t do him any favours.
Clive Woodward came to New Zealand as a credible new-age, highperformance guru in 2005 and left it as a Rasputin figure — widely perceived as the sort of bloke who would ask for a dollar to read palms in the back of his mate’s tent.
The 2017 tour is going to take another coaching casualty, almost regardless of what happens in the next five days. Warren Gatland is going to leave with less respect than when he arrived. The Lions could win their last three games and even then he won’t be able to win everyone back.
He might be about to learn the hard way that the end does not always justify the means.
There are forgivable and unforgivable sins as far as the New Zealand rugby public are concerned and up until the first test, Gatland’s litany of faux pas were all of the former nature.
His devotion to Warrenball is absolutely forgivable. Visiting teams don’t have to play like New Zealand teams to earn respect.
Suggesting there’s no real difference between Super Rugby teams and the All Blacks — strange and totally inaccurate, but forgivable.
Using the media to put pressure on the match referees to look out for New Zealand teams deliberately blocking . . . irritating, not advisable, but forgivable because Gatland did at least have a valid point.
Implying that the All Blacks set out to deliberately injury Lions halfback Conor Murray . . . it is here that tolerance ends.
Implying the All Blacks are dirty is the unforgivable sin. Questioning their playing ethics and morals is a line that can’t be crossed.
That can’t be taken back and it can’t easily be forgiven. It is a baseless accusation that reeks of desperation. It looks painfully like a coach with an excellent global reputation feeling his career is about to take a nasty tumble, and he’s grabbing at anything on his way down.
His fall will likely be that little bit harder given it was Gatland, who called for an end to the trash talk just two days before the first test.
Pressure is squeezing him into making bad decisions and perhaps when the dust from this series settles and he looks back, he’ll agree it was dumb and reckless to say what he did.
Dumb because the Lions are here as much to prove their right to survive as an entity as they are to win the series. They need to capture hearts and minds. If they took a giant step towards doing that at Eden Park with the extraordinary vision of their counter-attack, they have now taken two giant steps back thanks to Gatland’s cheap shot.
Reckless because it has given the All Blacks cheap and easy fuel.
Victory for the Lions in the test series won’t make this go away.
The world’s best team are tough, relentless, uncompromising and ruthless but within the letter and the spirit of the law — like every other test side.