YOU GAT IT ALL WRONG

Lions arrived too late to prepare properly ... and Warren doesn’t know his best team says All Blacks boss

ALL BLACKS boss Steve Hansen has questioned whether the Lions have got their priorities right on this tour.

Warren Gatland’s men face the best club side in the world tomorrow on the back of their first defeat of the trip. They play an unbeaten Crusaders team, boasting eight All Blacks, knowing another loss would leave their morale in bits a fortnight before they even reach the Test series. Hansen believes the Lions shot themselves in the foot by only arriving 72 hours before their opening game. Their performance was compromised, it cost them momentum and paved the way for the Blues, statistically New Zealand’s worst side, to pick them off in their second game. Asked if he knew what sort of Lions’ Test team to expect, Hansen shook his head and said: “I don’t think they do either. We find it hard moulding players from five different franchises, they’ve got four countries and some of the countries don’t like each other. “That’s a task in itself, that takes time and energy. When you then come here on a Wednesday and play on a Saturday, that’s an impossible task. It doesn’t matter who you are and I don’t know why they decided to do that. “Whether it was because commercialism took over from high performance, you’d have to ask them. If it has then they should have argued more for high-performance.” Gatland (above) insists the Lions remain on track as his plan was always to use the first three games to give everyone a start before moving on to the Test team-building phase. He says he is not bothered how many games they lose along the way as long as they get it right come the series. “You would expect an international team to beat a franchise team,” said Hansen, gently turning up the heat on Gatland. “And I’ve always said this is the best Lions side to come here. “But the Crusaders are on a roll, full of confidence and full of All Blacks. The Lions probably don’t have much confidence because they haven’t got it together. “At some point you’ve got to start winning or people are will say, ‘This isn’t working’.” The Lions need to stop conceding penalties and start taking their chances – and stop listening to the Kiwi camp.

FINDING IT TOUGH GOING Lion James Haskell battling with the Auckland Blues Below left: Steve Hansen