Lions star blames Warren Gatland for Lions not beating All Blacks - Ruck

Lions star blames Warren Gatland for Lions not beating All Blacks

Seán O’Brien has blamed Warren Gatland and his coaching staff for the British & Irish Lions’ failure to win their series in New Zealand over the summer.

“I’d be pretty critical of it because I think we should have won the tour and we probably should have won it comfortably,” O’Brien said in an interview with Off The Ball.

“The first week we definitely over-trained on the Thursday and maybe the coaches were panicking a little bit about getting the information into us. On the first week [of the first Test], we had a triple [session] day, lads’ legs were heavy on the Thursday and we were playing the All Blacks on Saturday.

“We did nearly a similar thing in the last week. So maybe it’s more [from] a coaching point of view, in terms of taking lessons. Less is more sometimes on a tour like that, rather than trying to pick things up at the end of the week.”


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“If I was being critical of any coach it would be the fact that I think Rob (Howley)struggled with the group in terms of his attributes of trying to get stuff across, whereas Johnny [Sexton] and Owen [Farrell] drove everything the second week,” he was quoted as saying in the Daily Mail.

“The coaches have a lot to answer for in terms of our attack rather than Johnny and Faz trying to drive it. I think we should have won 3-0 with the players we had.”