Lydiate to miss New Zealand tour

Editor

Dan Lydiate's tour to New Zealand appears to be over before even setting foot on the plane after going off in the first half against England.

Warren Gatland revealed after Sunday's loss to England at Twickenham that Lydiate had suffered both a hamstring and shoulder injury.

Lydiate, Wales captain on the day with Sam Warburton absent, therefore appears unlikely to play any part in Wales' three-Test tour against the All Blacks.

New Zealand are already firm favourites in the rugby betting odds, and this injury blow should only further strengthen their claim.

"He's struggling. He's got a hamstring and potentially an AC injury as well. We haven't made that decision yet," Gatland said.

"He's got to process that the tour could already be over for him and obviously that's incredibly disappointing that he won't be on the plane tomorrow. He'll go back to the hotel and ice it up to see if there's potentially a miracle in the next 12 hours. Our physio doesn't look very positive at the moment."

Gatland also voiced his opinion over the key TMO decision in the build-up to Jack Clifford's try for England, suggesting the ball had been knocked on and the score should therefore have been disallowed.

"Look I've just got to accept the decision, but he's put his hand out, whether they argue it's gone forward or backwards there's no attempt to try and catch the ball, it's to try and intercept or stop the pass being completed, so it's an easy enough decision to rule it as a knock forward," Gatland explained.

"But if the TMO's ruled that way then I'm reasonably happy. There's probably three of four other incidents in the game where the same thing has happened, with contact and then the ball going straight down.

"The referee's called knock-ons in those situations… it's a pretty important decision at a vital time in the game for us to score that try."

England boss Eddie Jones suggested that Dan Biggar had overstepped the mark in the aftermatch of the decision when he confronted referee Marius Mitrea, but Gatland defended his fly-half by adding that he had no issue with the passion Biggar displayed in his objection to the call.

"Dan was adamant it was a knock-on and he was just passionate," he said.

"There wasn't any abuse towards the referee, that would be unacceptable, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a player demonstrating what he feels is a pretty important decision and showing a bit of passion.

"Dan does get quite emotional at the game and he's been working on that aspect, but I don't have an issue with players showing emotion in terms of that because he just felt clearly that the decision was wrong.

"There's always a reasonable amount of talking at referees by players during the game."