‘It must stop now’ – Rassie Erasmus hits out at Warren Gatland’s ‘nasty’ spy claim during the 2021 B&I Lions tour
Springboks boss Rassie Erasmus and an inset of former Lions head coach Warren Gatland.
Rassie Erasmus has called for Warren Gatland to stop spreading misinformation after the former British and Irish Lions boss claimed the Springboks spied on the tourists in 2021.
A frustrated man after South Africa’s 42-24 victory over Italy at Loftus Versfeld on Saturday evening, Erasmus dubbed Gatland’s claim as pure hearsay.
Gatland’s claims
In his latest Telegraph column, Gatland claimed that the Boks had rented a house that overlooked the British and Irish Lions’ training ground and mounted a long-lens camera in order to spy on the tourists.
He and his coaching team suspected that they were being spied on and believed their fears to be confirmed when Lukhanyo Am made a huge hit on Elliot Daly during the first Test match of the series.
Gatland claimed that Erasmus was also pictured on the pitch with a piece of paper that had the Lions‘ plays on it.
“Rassie was also on the pitch acting as a ‘water boy,’ carrying a piece of paper,” he wrote.
“One of the photographers got a picture of him holding the page standing beside Faf de Klerk, their scrum-half, and after the game, we enlarged the photo which showed that there were some of our moves and calls on it.”
The Lions subsequently moved their training sessions indoors to avoid further suspected espionage.
“The first Test experience seemed to confirm our fears,” he added.
“We just didn’t know how they could have so much information on us. We started training indoors in a gym to negate the suspicion we had of being watched. But we still felt we were being filmed.”
Rassie Erasmus slams Warren Gatland with sarcastic posts after ‘spying’ accusations
It must stop
Erasmus took to social media on Friday evening to hit out at Gatland’s claims but after the match against Italy on Saturday, he called for the former Wales head coach to stop spreading his conspiracy theories.
“It must stop now,” he told reporters.
“If you are going to tell every story about every possible and unlikely thing that happened, there’s going to be a lot of stories like this.
“I don’t want people to get the idea that these sort of things actually happen behind the scenes.
“There is so much stuff you hear about every practice and so many weird stories of coaches trying to catch other coaches out.”
He added: “It’s a nasty claim to make in the newspaper on hearsay. It just creates awkwardness.
“I would like it to stop now and for us not to talk about it anymore.”
