Controversy is no stranger to tours of New Zealand by the British & Irish Lions. None are arguably as big as the spiteful fall-out from the Brian O’Driscoll ‘shoulder-gate' affair.
Modern-day Welsh rugby legend Dan Biggar says his relationship with his country’s Kiwi coach Warren Gatland was testy, claiming Gatland used mind games that often backfired.
New book reveals British & Irish Lions “refused” orders from Gatland’s coaching box to be substituted in games during the side’s 2017 tour to New Zealand.
The veteran of 112 tests for Wales says the Kiwi coach left his teammates “mortally embarrassed” when he introduced music mega-star Sir Tom Jones to the team.
Fuming British & Irish Lions players mounted an effective mutiny on Kiwi coach Warren Gatland’s coaching box during the side’s 2017 tour here, repeatedly refusing orders to be substituted during matches.
The revelation comes in an explosive tell-all book from Wales’ former match-winning first-five Dan Biggar, which detailsthe at-times unhappy relationship he shared with Gatland during the Kiwi coach’s tenures coaching both Wales and the Lions.
The bombshells in The Biggar Picture: My Life in Rugby include how original selections in Gatland’s touring Lions team – including the midweek side who had dubbed themselves the “Midweek Veg” – repeatedly refused to be replaced during matches.
The additions – Welsh and Scottish players who were on their national team’s tour of New Zealand or Australia at the time – were called on not because of injuries in the camp but rather because of Gatland’s desire to increase his squad ahead of the final two tests against the All Blacks.
But it backfired in terms of the Lions’ internal culture, with original tour selections believing that some of the group – who had been labelled “Geography Six” – weren’t deserving of the honour.
“The move went down like a turd in the punch bowl in certain quarters,” Biggar wrote in The Biggar Picture.
Dan Biggar in action in the Lions' clash with the Hurricanes, a game he said his side failed to win because the team got jaded when players refused to be subbed off. Photo / Brett Phibbs
“With the exception of [Tomas Francis] Franny and Gareth ‘Cawdor’ Davies, these players weren’t the next cabs off the rank, so to speak. They’d essentially been picked as cannon fodder because they were closer geographically than the Irish or English players who were touring South Africa and Argentina respectively.
“It developed into a full-blown PR disaster. The ‘Geography Six’ debacle became another brickbat for the Kiwis to hurl at Gats, who doubled down angrily, claiming he was here to win a test series and nothing else mattered.”
Biggar recalled he did “my best” to welcome the six mid-tour additions.
But they got a “frosty reception” from other players, most notably England props Joe Marler and Dan Cole.
“They clearly thought the arrival of the Geography Six had cheapened the whole experience.”
With two midweek games remaining in the tour – against Super Rugby franchises the Chiefs and Hurricanes – the arrival of the new additions became a hot topic internally.
Biggar said that was when some players decided to refuse to be subbed off for any of the group.
“A bit of chat started going around the so-called ‘Midweek Veg’ that they were going to refuse to be subbed off during those games,” he said.
Britsih & Irish Lions coach Warren Gatland upset several of his mid-week team on tour in New Zealand in 2017 by bringing in six mid-tour additions to increase the squad size. Photo / Greg Bowker
“They’d rather twice play the full 80 minutes than see a member of the Geography Six run on.”
And that was what played out in both the remaining midweek games.
Marler “refused point blank to leave the fray” against the Chiefs despite the fact he had “virtually cracked open his head”, Biggar wrote.
A week later, both Cole and Biggar refused to go off against the Hurricanes; a match which ended in a dramatic 31-31 draw as the Hurricanes fought back against a tiring Lions team.
Prop Joe Marler refused to be subbed off for the Lions, including when injured, according to Dan Biggar's new book in protest to the arrival of mid-tour additions. Photo / Greg Bowker
“Sadly, the furore surrounding the Geography Six reared its ugly head and cost us victory,” Biggar wrote in The Biggar Picture.
“I’d converted two tries and knocked over four penalties as we built what seemed an unassailable 31-17 lead, but once again, players were refusing to be subbed off.
“At one point Joe Marler was arguing loudly with our forwards coach, Graham Rowntree, while he was still on the pitch. He’d had his ankle strapped by then, and Dan Cole was clearly blowing out of his backside, but neither would budge.”
By the end of the tour, only two of the unwelcome six mid-tour recruits got game time. Both cases were due to enforced injury changes.
- Lions - Lions prop Dan Cole during the 2017 British and Irish Lions match against the Blues Super Rugby team at Eden Park. Photo / Greg Bowker
Biggar said the additions had experienced “misery and opprobrium through no fault of their own”.
“They didn’t consider themselves Lions and would rather not have bothered.”
How Gatland muffed team introduction to Sir Tom Jones – and Biggar’s other struggles with Kiwi coach
But he writes in The Biggar Picture – published by Pan Macmillan – a verbal faux pas from Gatland in the build-up to the game also provided one of his biggest cringe moments.
Biggar wrote that during Alan Phillips’ tenure as team manager, he had “used every contact in his little black book to persuade some of Wales’ most feted celebrities” to come in and present match jerseys to the test team.
Sir Tom Jones may be a household name in Wales – and around the world – but Warren Gatland muffed his intro to the Welsh rugby team, according to Dan Biggar.
“Ask people across the globe to name a single Welsh person and this guy’s name would probably be one of maybe three or four that immediately spring to mind,” Biggar wrote.
“But clearly his fame hadn’t spread as far as Warren Gatland’s corner of New Zealand, as our head coach announced, in hushed tones, that our jerseys would be presented by the one and only . . . ‘Tom James’.
“To his eternal credit, he didn’t correct Warren, but we were all mortally embarrassed on his behalf.”
Dan Biggar has written of the highs and lows of his test career with Wales and the Lions in his new book. Photo / Photosport
In the aftermath, the team fined Gatland more than $1000 for his mistake. On the field, Biggar scored 23 points, including a crucial late penalty.
Gatland – in his roles as head coach of both Wales and the Lions – features heavily in The Biggar Picture.
And many of the mentions are not flattering in terms of the nature of the relationship between the star No 10 and his coach.
Biggar wrote how he believed Gatland “usually preferred subtlety and mind games” to try to get the best out of his players. But that was an approach that didn’t always work, leaving his players confused and too on edge.
Warren Gatland has tasted soaring victories and painful defeats during his two tenures coaching the Welsh national team. Photo / Photosport
Biggar also wrote how Gatland was prone to shoot from the lip in blistering fashion, including detailing a dressing room rant aimed at then-captain Ryan Jones after Wales had drawn 16-16 with Fiji in 2010.
“Warren was apoplectic, channelling most of his anger towards Ryan,” he wrote.
“He stormed into the changing room and let rip; ‘Sit the f*** down, the lot of you,’ he yelled, his voice trembling with rage.”
Biggar wrote Gatland then said: “Some of you should be ashamed to be taking a match fee today. I’ll tell you one thing,” he continued, eyeballing Jones. “Matthew Rees will be captain next week.”
After the rant, Biggar recalled, “the silence hung heavily in the air”.
But it was a tenure which started “in disastrous fashion”, Biggar wrote.
Warren Gatland was portrayed as a clown in an illustration in the New Zealand Herald during the Lions tour – something which upset both him and his team. Cartoon / Rod Emmerson
Wales finished fifth in the 2023 Six Nations.
Off the field, the test team almost went on strike mid-tournament after a messy contract wrangle with the Welsh Rugby Union.
Biggar writes in The Biggar Picture that he and some teammates were left “unimpressed” that in their minds Gatland hadn’t supported them in the battle.
“We felt Gats had shown us a lack of respect and was siding with the union,” he wrote.
By the end of the 2017 Lions tour, it was Warren Gatland who was laughing loudest and happy to call himself a happy clown after his side drew the dramatic test series. Photo / NZME
“We’d brought him a huge amount of success over the years, and the one time we needed his support, he’d withdrawn it. We were being treated like impetuous children rather than grown men standing on principle.
“I wasn’t the only one who was unimpressed. Leadership is about how you make people feel, and we felt pretty let down.”
The moment Biggar was left “genuinely terrified” by Jerry Collins in training session blow-up
Biggar makes no apologies for his no-nonsense approach on the playing and practice field, a stance which saw him at times eyeball and challenge verbally teammates, opponents and match officials.
He writes in The Biggar Picture how it was an attitude that got him offside with some, including Gatland once “laying into me” in a column the Welsh coach had written after a Wales/England test.
Given how seriously he approached the game, Biggar wrote, “I just couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t as meticulous in their prep.
Former Welsh test rugby star Dan Biggar has lifted the lid on his career – and the coaching of Warren Gatland – in his tell-all book, The Biggar Picture: My Life in Rugby.
“It certainly got me into trouble with the forwards a few times”.
“And so it did, one overcast afternoon in Llandarcy, when the normally docile Jerry Collins objected to the way I’d bawled him out, flew into a fearful rage and started chasing me around the pitch,” Biggar wrote in The Biggar Picture.
“It might have looked like an out-take from Benny Hill, but I was genuinely terrified.
Jerry Collins – in action against the 2005 British and Irish Lions – left Dan Biggar trembling after the Welsh No 10 had directed a verbal barb at him during a club training session at the Ospreys. Photo / Mark Mitchell
“Admittedly, my choice of words had been a little coarse – ‘Oi Collins, you dozy p****, what the f*** are you playing at?’ – and he reacted accordingly, sprinting towards me like some kind of Marvel villain; jaw set, legs pumping, and with murder on his mind.
“Mercifully, some of his fellow forwards intervened and rescued me from a grisly fate.”
Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 32 years of newsroom experience.
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