Rugby World Cup Blog

Warren Gatland has revealed that he will not be playing mind games with the South Africa players as he helps the Lions prepare for their opening tour match against a Royal XV on Saturday.

The Wales coach sparked a great deal of controversy during this year’s Six Nations tournament when he publicly admitted that his Welsh players didn’t like their Irish rivals. Ireland, of course, then went on to win the Grand-slam, prompting a response to Gatland’s comments by Lions captain Paul O’Connell.

Speaking about the situation, Gatland said that he wants to ‘keep my mouth shut’ during this tour because he has ‘had a couple of lessons’ since his Six Nations outburst. In fact, he aims to be ‘very boring’ while the Lions are in South Africa, thus avoiding any controversy.

Gatland admits that mind games can often do nothing other than ‘motivate the opposition’ to raise their game. When you are playing a team like South Africa, this is the last thing you want to be doing. Therefore, he is probably right by keeping his thoughts to himself.

The New Zealander did reveal that the Lions team have ‘a couple of things up our sleeve’ though, suggesting that the aim is to catch South Africa off guard in terms of how they will approach the three-Test series.

As for how the preparation is going overall, Gatland seems very happy indeed. He says that he is confident the Lions can ‘play some positive rugby and score some good tries’ over the next few weeks.

The 45-year-old also claimed that the squad has gelled together ‘a lot quicker than initially expected’, meaning that everything is coming together nicely. Gatland clearly believes in this bunch of players.

The obvious downer of the tour so far though, as we all know, is the amount of injuries that have been picked up. Gatland admits to seeing huge ‘disappointment’ on the players who are set to miss out. This is a Lions tour after all and it doesn’t get much bigger.

Gatland knows this all too well and it is probably one of the main reasons that he is deciding to let the players do the majority of the team’s talking on the pitch.

By Thomas Rooney