LIONS COACH GATLAND DENIES WELSH BIAS IN SQUAD SELECTION
WARREN Gatland has strenuously denied any Welsh bias on previous Lions tour selections and revealed how he’d love to see a “large number of Scotsmen” making his squad for the three-Test series with South Africa next summer.
The former Wales coach came in for a barrage of criticism north of the border by taking 15 Welshmen to Australia in 2013 and 12 on their trip to New Zealand four years on.
In comparison, just seven Scots made the touring party under Gatland on those two trips.
Gatland also caused a storm in Ireland when he named 10 Wales players in his starting XV for the final Test against Australia, famously dropping Brian O’Driscoll and choosing Jonathan Davies at 13 instead.
He was proved right, the Welsh stars having superb games as the Lions thrashed the Wallabies 41-16 in a record score.
Joining Davies in the team for that Sydney decider were Leigh Halfpenny, Jamie Roberts, George North, Mike Phillips, Richard Hibbard, Adam Jones, Alun Wyn Jones (capt), Dan Lydiate and Taulupe Faletau.
But in a revealing in-depth interview with former Lions centre Will Greenwood on a Sky Sports podcast, Gatland refuted accusations he favoured Welsh players for his Lions.
“I can promise you there’s never been any bias yet,” insisted Gatland. “My job is to win a Test series for the Lions and to pick the best players along with the other coaches.
“It’s not just me picking the players, it’s not a one-man selection team. It’s in conjunction with the other four or five coaches and us being unanimous in the final selection.
“You’ve got to get that right and I’m a great believer in that we need to have people from the four home nations, we need to have representation, particularly from Scotland.
“It’s critically important, and for the next seven or eight months the performance of players in the international campaigns and some big club games becomes important.
“You want to make sure the four home nations are represented and hopefully we can have a large number of Scotsmen representing the Lions because I do recognise that.”
Gatland also addressed the controversy of calling up the ‘Geography Six’ players in 2017.
His selection of four Welshmen, Cory Hill, Tomas Francis, Gareth Davies and Kristian Dacey, amongst the half dozen caused further anger.
This time around Gatland says he plans to compile a well-known standby list of players to fly out to South Africa next summer at short notice if necessary.
“Probably the learnings from the last tour in terms of bringing extra players in was that it didn’t go down brilliantly with everybody,” he said.
“The big part of that is we didn’t let everyone know beforehand that it was likely to happen.
“The whole reason behind that was to protect and give the Test 23 the best possible preparation going into that first Test.
“We’ll probably name a standby group of players so if we do pick up injuries we’re able to bring them out to cover us.”
During the recent Rugby World Cup, Gatland’s Wales came up against an immensely physical South African pack and almost toppled them in the semi-finals.
The Springboks then steamrolled England in the final, and a key theme heading into next summer is how the tourists will deal with that ominous physicality, especially up front.
Gatland, who wouldn’t be drawn on a potential captain for the tour when asked about Maro Itoje’s credentials, backed players from these shores to deal with it.
“We had a really close World Cup semi-final with the Springboks with Wales that could have gone either way,” remembered the Kiwi.
“We won six of the last seven games against them and part of that philosophy was keeping the ball on the park and moving the big men around, being in the arm wrestle against them and taking your opportunities.
“Yes, they did exceptionally well in that final against England.
“I think the strength of them was not so much the starting XV but the bench.
“You look at the quality coming off their bench and you could argue some of those players were maybe better than some of the starters.
“They came on and gave some significant impact in terms of continuing to build momentum.
“If we’re going to pick the Lions team, we’re not going in there thinking about physicality because there’s enough big physical players in the UK and Ireland to match them, if we need to do that.
“We’ve just got to pick the best rugby players and they’ll have the combination of a lot of abilities in terms of skill, speed, while some will bring some power and size.”