Mind games.

British and Irish Lions boss Warren Gatland has taken a cheeky swipe at Springboks Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus following his antics last night.

Erasmus stepped in and took charge of South Africa ‘A’ with head coach Jacques Nienaber still in isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 and was spotted on the touchline, wearing a bib.

The former Munster head coach seemed to be operating as a ‘waterboy’ last night, despite the fact that he wasn’t carrying any water!

This comes after Erasmus insinuated that the Lions were ‘scared’ to play them against on Saturday instead of the Stormers.

“I don’t know, I think he was trying to wind us up saying we’re scared,” Gatland told us.

“Sometimes he’s capable of doing that. Last night he was the waterboy running on the pitch. If you’re the water boy running onto the pitch you’ve got to make sure you’re carrying water!

“I didn’t understand what his role was – you don’t run onto the pitch giving messages as the waterboy without carrying water. My advice to him is to make sure he’s carrying water next time he does that.”

We touched on the Faf de Klerk incident already and Gatland has added to that, once again questioning the decision and revealing the Lions will be chatting to the referees for the series tomorrow.

“I can’t understand where the comments were that there was no contact to the head,” he added.

“Someone was watching a different picture to me.

“I thought it looked reckless to me. No arms and he’s hit the arm first and then the shoulder, but there’s definitely head-on-head contact.

“We’ve got a meeting with the referees tomorrow just to get a bit of clarity on that. What we want is clarity so that we get complete consistency.

“The citing commissary looks at those things.

“It’ll be interesting to see what the referees come back with and what other people who have looked at come back with in terms of what the recommendations were for that incident.”