Warren Gatland stunningly accuses Rassie Erasmus and Springboks of ‘spying’ on British and Irish Lions in 2021
British and Irish Lions centre Elliot Daly and an inset of South African Rugby fans.
Former British and Irish Lions boss Warren Gatland claims that the Springboks spied on the touring team in 2021.
The tour to South Africa was marred by Rassie Erasmus’ video critiquing the officials’ performance in the opening Test match, but Gatland took exception to the other measures he believes that the hosts went to.
I know the Springboks spied on us
He believes that the Springboks spied on the tourists from a house that overlooked their training ground in Cape Town, citing Lukhanyo Am’s iconic big hit on Elliot Daly as the moment suspicions grew.
“We also felt that during the tour we were spied on while we were based at the Arabella Country Estate near the coastal town of Hermanus, about a 90-minute drive from Cape Town. This is something that Gregor Townsend has spoken about publicly,” Gatland wrote in his latest Telegraph column.
While the Lions did have security guards to limit the possibility of this occurring, the former head coach admits that they could only do so much.
He and his coaching team became suspicious that the South Africans were resorting to espionage in order to gain a competitive advantage when Am thundered into Daly in the first Test match with the Lions running a set-play that they had saved for Boks.
“Our suspicions grew in the first Test, when Lukhanyo Am hit Elliot Daly with a massive man-and-ball tackle, reading a move that we had not used before during the tour matches,” he wrote.
“Because there were no supporters in the stadium, we could hear what was being said in the Springboks’ coaches box. We could hear the messages being relayed to their physio on the pitch about the moves that they thought we were doing.
“Rassie was also on the pitch acting as a ‘water boy,’ carrying a piece of paper. 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.”
He added: “The first Test experience seemed to confirm our fears. 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.
“Our concern was that they were using a long-range lens to video us from somewhere nearby.”
Not the first time
Gatland also claims to have found out from a well-connected source in South Africa that the house nearby their training ground had been rented out for the entirety of the series and that a camera had been mounted on the top corner to spy on the Lions.
He also believes that this is not a one-off and that there is a lot of spying on the opposition that is going on.
During the Chasing the Sun docuseries, the Springboks also had fears that they were being spied on by the French, with South Africa also moving many of their training sessions indoors to limit the risk.
Eddie Jones has also claimed to have had his sessions spied by the All Blacks on during his time with England.
