Coach Warren Gatland is furious after his British and Irish Lions test team was leaked to the media.
The Times of London predicted the first test XV which would run out against the Springboks in Cape Town, including the dropping of stand-in captain Conor Murray to the bench.
National divisions and divided loyalties mean Lions teams can be tricky political animals to manage, as Graham Henry found out with the 2001 side in Australia.
Gatland brought the team announcement forward by a day after the leak and will change his announcement procedures for the remaining tests. He admitted someone’s trust may have been broken.
“I don’t know how that happened,” he said.
“It wasn’t a 100 per cent right. Obviously someone has leaked that out, whether that is on purpose or accidentally or someone has betrayed someone’s trust – whether that’s a player or a staff member.
“So, what I’ll do next week is just name the team to the players and name the team to the press straight away.”
Here we look at four possible suspects to how the team got leaked
#1. Disgruntled player
There were some suggestions online across social media that the starting XV could have been leaked to the media by a disgruntled player who missed out on selection. However, this doesn’t seem likely due to the reported closeness of the group, but you never know.
Likelihood: Not likely
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