British & Irish Lions head coach Warren Gatland has explained his somewhat strange decision to not use the majority of his replacements against the Hurricanes this morning.
When asked to explain why he didn’t use the bench in the second half when the game was going against the tourists, Gatland said: “Those players were called out as cover, that was the case.
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“I know there’s a lot been made about that in terms of the decision we made to bring players in for cover and protect as many of the Test 23 as we could.
“If we hadn’t had those players there tonight we’d have probably had players from the bench on Saturday who would have been exposed.
“We lost Robbie Henshaw and Dan Biggar went off with a HIA. So potentially we would have been exposing players from the Test 23 earlier on.
“I think so much was made about devaluing the jersey and all those bits and pieces, so we made a decision that we would try to get through the game with as many of the starting XV as we could.