Honours even but Gatland emerges as the real winner

WARREN GATLAND wearing a clown nose into yesterday’s postmatch press conference was a fitting rebuke to his legions of critics during a tumultuous tour of New Zealand.

The Lions head coach was the target of sustained criticism over the last six weeks, his Kiwi countrymen not appreciating his efforts to inflict series defeat humiliation on the All Blacks on their own turf.

However, while some of the flak was justified — notably Gatland overseeing the embarrassing ‘Geography Six’ affair and taking needless swipes at the Lions’ hosts — depicting him as a clown in a national newspaper was over the top personal abuse and rightly condemned.

Thus, Gatland could be forgiven his riposte yesterday for, while the series may not have been won, his Lions achieved huge credibility on the most challenging tour in rugby. Nobody gave the Lions a prayer on this mission but Gatland (below) fashioned a team and gameplan that threw New Zealand off their stride and, though he benefited from large slices of fortune (particularly in the Lions’ second Test victory in Wellington) he proved his credentials as one of the finest coaches the game has seen. In the process, all talk of the Lions concept being abandoned due its impracticality in the professional era has been banished and the head coach deservers the majority of credit for that. This epic series may have ended allsquare, but Warren Gatland has emerged as a real winner.