Warren Gatland makes huge South Africa accusation over 2021 Lions tour
Sneaky.
Former British & Irish Lions head coach Warren Gatland has thrown some huge accusations at South Africa and Rassie Erasmus over what went down during the 2021 tour.
The Lions visited South Africa four years ago for a three-Test series with the Springboks, in a tour that many believe should never have gone ahead with all the covid restrictions.
Rassie released an infamous 60-minute match officials rant after losing the first test, that caused quite a stir, but ultimately it was the Boks who emerged 2-1 winners.
But Gatland has claimed that the Lions were spied ahead of the series.
“The Lions can expect the mind games from Australia to ramp up over the next two weeks before the first Test in Brisbane but I just hope that the tour is played in a better spirit than we faced in South Africa four years ago,” Gatland wrote in his Telegraph column.
“The incidents with Rassie Erasmus, the Springboks head coach, have been well-documented, including his video critique of the match officials in our first Test victory in Cape Town.
“But we also felt that during the tour we were spied on while we were based at the Arabella Country Estate near the coastal town of Hermanus, about a 90-minute drive from Cape Town.
“The Covid restrictions meant we had to stay there during the three Tests, which were moved to Cape Town to reduce the risk of infection.
“We trained at the nearby Hermanus High School and although we had security guards checking out the potential sites where cameras could be placed, there was only so much they could do.
“Our suspicions grew in the first Test, when Lukhanyo Am hit Elliot Daly with a massive man-and-ball tackle, reading a move that we had not used before during the tour matches.”
Gatland even claims that some of the Lions moves were written on a sheet of paper that Rassie had on him in his capacity as ‘water boy’ for the games.
“Rassie was also on the pitch acting as a ‘water boy,’ carrying a piece of paper. One of the photographers got a picture of him holding the page standing beside Faf de Klerk, their scrum-half, and after the game, we enlarged the photo which showed that there were some of our moves and calls on it.”
You can read Gatland’s column in full here.
