Lions sweep hotel for bugging devices

that they don’t. We have a [security] team in there and they are good at doing their job.”

There is no suggestion that the All Blacks would be involved in such underhand tactics. The Lions, however, are wise not to take any chances after the row that erupted between the New Zealand and Australian unions last August, when a listening device was located in a room at a hotel in Sydney where the All Blacks were staying ahead of their Bledisloe Cup match.

Details of the bug emerged on the day of the match in a New Zealand newspaper, causing anger in the Australia camp at claims that they might have been involved. A subsequent police investigation led to Adrian Gard, 51, one of the All Blacks’ security guards, being charged with one count of false misrepresentation, resulting in a police investigation in February.

Accusations of spying between international teams are nothing new. At the 2015 World Cup England were wrongly accused of spying on Australia, while the 2005 Lions squad on their tour of New Zealand were adamant that their line-out codes had been cracked ahead of the first Test, so they changed them at the last minute, with disastrous results.

Carwyn James, who coached the Lions on their successful tour of New Zealand in 1971, is thought to have tried to protect his players from prying eyes by inventing fake moves. When asked by one of his own players why there were practising an over-complicated move, James is reported to have said: “Those New Zealanders don’t know that, do they?”