SPOTY can rise above ‘trivial’ with honour for Gatland
BBC sport awards have chance to answer shameful flak fired at the Lions’ suffering coach,
Who knows? Sean O’brien might even deign to be there himself to toast the 1-1 nailbiter
After my annual and, it must be admitted, rather familiar rant about Sports Personality of the Year 12 months ago, I was berated by a well-known figure high in the production.
“Calm down – it’s just a b----- TV awards show,” I was told. “It’s crazy that anyone should get bothered by something so trivial.”
Fair enough. Whoever lifts the big prize on Sunday will be applauded from these quarters. But in terms of being “just a b----- awards show”, SPOTY has the chance to raise itself above the “trivial” by selecting the right set of players for the team-of-the-year prize and the right person as coach of the year – the British and Irish Lions and Warren Gatland.
Perhaps the sight of the red-shirted heroes with their gallantly gruff Kiwi leader on stage at the Echo Arena in Liverpool would revive memories of the dramatic exploits in New Zealand and, perhaps, replays of the thrilling drawn series would remind everyone what an achievement that was.
Then, maybe, all that negativity that has shamefully been allowed to cloud the tour can blessedly lift and we can all understand the scale of the feat. Who knows? Sean O’brien might even deign to be there himself, to toast the 1-1 nailbiter in which he made such a wholehearted contribution.
Certainly, it would help in the correction of the narrative. Of course, it was the Irish flanker who first flashed question marks. Pointedly criticising the coaching staff, O’brien declared: “We should have won the tour comfortably.”
Since then, O’brien and Gatland have made up, with the former issuing that favourite refrain – “Oooh, the ghastly media only focused on the nasty things I said and not the nice things.”
Yet be sure, Gatland is still hurting. In the promotion run for his tour diaries, he has repeatedly been asked to respond to O’brien’s strange put-down and justify the trip’s success, even though history does that quite emphatically. And through it all, the voices of dissenst have gained volume.
Billy Vunipola was injured and not even in New Zealand, but still saw fit to pass withering judgment. “If Eddie Jones went as coach, they would have won 3-0,” the No 8 said. That claim has been repeated many times on social media; only last week, I was barked down with such devastating logic on Twitter.
It came a few days after Jones was named World Rugby coach of the year for winning a Six Nations title – which someone does every year – and for humbling mighty Argentina in the summer.
Jones had the grace to say he did not deserve the accolade. But, in his view, it was not Gatland who should have been lauded, but Steve Hansen, the man who became the first All Blacks coach not to oversee a series win against the Lions tourists in 46 years.
Yes, it was an absurd scenario, so absurd that the unfairness was even highlighted in New Zealand, where, no, Gatland is not very popular. They recognise that under Gatland – in 2013 and 2017 – the Lions have been resuscitated from the life-threatening shambles of the 2001 and 2005 tours, which were overseen by two World Cup-winning supremos in Graham Henry and Sir Clive Woodward.
On first seeing the 2017 Lions schedule, Henry remarked: “That’s a suicide mission.” Well, it turned into a fight for life, with the Lions walking away with heads held high. We should be asked to recall just how high they deserved to be held on Sunday and never again forget it going forward.