Gatland not taking bait from Boks’ ‘waterboy’
BRITISH & Irish Lions coach Warren Gatland has a message for his Springboks counterpart Rassie Erasmus, as the verbal sparring between the two goes up a notch as the Test series approaches.
Speaking yesterday after naming his team to play the Stormers tomorrow, and the day after his team had lost to a Bok team masquerading as “South Africa A”, Gatland had a dig at Erasmus’s role as the Boks’ waterboy, which he first performed when the Boks played Georgia a fortnight ago.
“He’s a waterboy but the thing is, if you’re the waterboy running onto the pitch, you have to make sure that you are carrying the water. So I didn’t quite understand what his role was. You don’t run onto the pitch, carrying messages, without the water. My advice is next time he must make sure he is carrying water when he does that!”
Erasmus, in turn, had baited Gatland by suggesting the Lions were scared to take up his offer of a rematch with SA ‘A’ instead of them playing the Stormers.
But Gatland was never going to take the bait …
“I think Rassie was just trying to wind us up by saying we were scared, which he is sometimes capable of doing,” Gatland said.
On a more serious note, Gatland was annoyed that scrumhalf Faf de Klerk had not been give a red card for an armless challenge on a Lions player. De Klerk was given a yellow after a TMO review, but Gatland feels it should have been more.
“I can’t understand the comments that there was no contact to the head,” Gatland said. “Someone was watching a different picture to me. It looked reckless to me, no arms and he’s hit the arm first and then the shoulder, but then there’s definitely head contact.
“We’ve got a meeting with the referees tomorrow just to get a little bit more clarity on that. What we want is complete consistency.
“There is a citing commissioner who looks at those things. It will be interesting to see what the referees come back with and what other people who have had a look at it come back with.”
Gatland has wasted no time in selecting his recently arrived reinforcements, Alun Wyn Jones and Marcus Smith, for the Stormers match.
The pair have just arrived from the UK and the big lock has been included on the bench, while Smith is straight in at flyhalf.
Smith is fresh from starring for England in their heavy defeats of the United States and Canada and is covering the injured Dan Biggar, while Jones will be completing an astonishing comeback.
Jones, the original tour captain, suffered what seemed to be a serious shoulder injury playing for the Lions against Japan in a warm-up game, but three weeks later he has been cleared to rejoin the tour after coming through practice sessions with Wales.
The team to play the Stormers will be captained by Scottish fullback Stuart Hogg and is a completely different starting XV from the one that went down 17-13 to SA A.
BRITISH & IRISH LIONS
Starting XV: 15 Stuart Hogg, 14 Josh Adams, 13 Elliot Daly, 12 Robbie Henshaw, 11 Duhan van der Merwe, 10 Marcus Smith, 9 Ali Price, 8 Jack Conan, 7 Hamish Watson, 6 Tadhg Furlong, 5 Jonny Hill, 4 Adam Beard, 3 Tadhg Furlong, 2 Luke Cowan-Dickie, 1 Rory Sutherland Replacements: Jamie George, Mako Vunipola, Zander Fagerson, Alun Wyn Jones, Sam Simmonds, Gareth Davies, Chris Harris, Louis Rees-Zammit