AMIDST all the rightful indignation emitted by Scottish rugby fans and plenty others from elsewhere on these islands, one staggering statistic did not appear in any of the pundits’ supposedly forensic examination of Warren Gatland’s selection of the 41 man squad for the British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand this summer.
All 12 Welsh players selected for the Lions squad played against Scotland at Murrayfield in February and were on the receiving end of an old-fashioned drubbing. They now have six times as many players in the squad as Scotland – go figure.
We are supposed to believe that the Scottish contingent was reduced to just two because Gatland and his fellow coaches believe that Scotland do not travel well.
And Wales did?
No problem with Gatland’s view based on the dreadful Scottish performance against England, but there were numerous genuine excuses for that dire display and after all, it was Gatland and company who said they would make their selections based on current form and the Six Nations overall was surely the best indicator of that.
Gatland cannot have it both ways. His brown-nosing backers in the rugby press all emphasised that he would pick players on form, yet they seem unable to explain why George Kruis can walk into the squad when he has only played two games since getting injured in January. He’s a very good player, but is he really much better than Jonny Gray and even his own England colleague Joe Launchbury, both in very good form in the Six Nations.
It’s just so sad that Gatland has played safety first and picked his Welsh mates ahead of genuinely exciting contenders from the other nations – Dan Biggar ahead of Finn Russell says it all.
The only possible way that Gatland can regain any form of credibility is for the Lions to beat the All Blacks in at least one of the tests, but The Rucker hereby predicts that the Lions will lose all three tests because New Zealand’s coaches know exactly how Gatland’s team will play, precisely because he has chosen a squad that will play his type of rugby.
The Rucker will also predict that only Stuart Hogg will give the Lions the kind of off-the-cuff flair that any team needs to beat the world champions.
The All Blacks are still in a state of transition following their victory in the 2015 World Cup, but look at their squad just now and compare them to the Lions squad and you would have no difficulty in concluding that the ‘blackwash’ is on.
Unless injuries to squad members make replacements necessary, you just cannot see Gatland succeeding at all with the choice of people he knows over people who might just cause the All Blacks different problems.
His selection is the action of a blinkered one dimensional coach, and while The Rucker always wants this to see the Lions win and I will support them fully in New Zealand, I genuinely feel that Warren Gatland’s choices mean that the tourists are going to the Land of the Long White Cloud with one collective arm tied behind their backs.
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