‘I KNEW TAKING JUST THE TWO SCOTS WOULD CAUSE A STIR’

WARREN GATLAND has admitted picking only two Scotland stars in his original 41-man British and Irish Lions squad for the summer tour of New Zealand was ‘hard’ on a team that had won three 2017 Six Nations games. In his new book, serialised this week in Sportsmail, Gatland reveals he knew selecting just Tommy Seymour and Stuart Hogg would ‘cause a stir’ — but also that Hogg was likely to start the first Test against the All Blacks had he not been hit by a freak injury. Scrum-half Greig Laidlaw was added to the squad when England’s Ben Youngs pulled out for personal reasons but only John Barclay and Finn Russell, who was later called up due to injury to others, came close to forcing their way in. ‘One thing that concerned us, and that we knew would cause a stir, was that we had only two Scots, Stuart Hogg and Tommy Seymour, in that original 41-man squad, which was hard on Scotland,’ said Gatland. ‘After all, they’d won three games in the Six Nations. ‘Even though we’d tried to pick the best 41 players regardless of nationality, we were acutely aware one of the four nations was not well represented. ‘We also discussed Simon Zebo, Keith Earls, John Barclay and Finn Russell. ‘But we were stretching the budget in taking 41, and very good players were always going to miss out.’ Despite Vern Cotter’s side winning three Six Nations matches, the 61-21 rout at Twickenham put paid to the chances of other Scottish players making the tour. That one-off result seemed to overshadow their three Six Nations win. ‘I didn’t expect Scotland to win,’ he said, ‘but I thought it was the most important test for their players, bearing in mind the Lions would be in New Zealand. ‘So I thought that if they lost by ten or 15 points, that might be a good result. ‘They’d beaten Ireland and Wales at home. ‘Not only were they beaten by 40 points, but it could have been a lot more!’ Gatland also admitted he was disappointed that Scotland head coach Gregor Townsend and Jason O’Halloran, who was about to join the Glasgow Warriors coaching team after a spell with the national team, had both turned down the chance to join his coaching set-up. ‘I asked Gregor but as he was taking over from Vern as Scotland head coach, he had to go on their tour to Australia and Fiji,’ he said. ‘It would have been a great opportunity for Gregor. Coaches can learn a lot from each other on a Lions tour and it would have been beneficial, but I understood his position. ‘I spoke with Jason O’Halloran. He’d played Super Rugby and coached in New Zealand. He was initially keen but he had committed to working with Dave Rennie and Glasgow during pre-season.’ No Scot featured in the three Tests against New Zealand but Gatland said Hogg would have done if he hadn’t picked up an injury. ‘I was informed Stuart Hogg had suffered a facial fracture against the Crusaders,’ wrote Gatland. ‘I told Hoggy: “Look mate, I know it’s no consolation, but our thoughts at the start of the tour were we were looking to start you in the first Test at 15”. ‘His attacking strengths are so good that we most likely would have done that.’