Kicking off the mind games

Warren Gatland has come out fighting ahead of the British & Irish Lions’ series decider with Australia, questioning whether the Wallabies can reach the necessary emotional peak for Saturday’s third Test.

On the day the Lions head coach ruthlessly dropped Brian O’Driscoll from his squad for this weekend’s must-win clash in Sydney, Gatland also threw the first real verbal grenade of this series.

Gatland and opposing head coach Robbie Deans, also a New Zealander, had resisted the urge to throw barbs, until the Lions boss cranked up the pre-match pressure in response to a question regarding his own team’s morale following their 16-15 defeat in last Saturday’s second Test. Gatland had been asked whether he had sensed in his players’ body language since then that the series had been effectively lost.

“Not at all,” he replied, before adding: “Australia, it was a one-point game last week and they were absolutely desperate [to win].

“The question for Australia is, can they get themselves emotionally up for this game? I’m not sure that they can do that.”

He cited Wallabies captain James Horwill’s tears of joy at end of the Australians’ one-point win at Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium as evidence of the emotional toll the second Test had taken on the home side.

“I’ve been involved in teams before and seen how massive emotion can play a role in terms of results,” Gatland said. “I can go back to 2005 with Wasps [against] Leicester. We played the last game of the round, Neil Back and Martin Johnson’s last game at Welford Road, and I went there and completely underestimated the emotion of those two players and Wasps were well beaten by Leicester at Welford Road.

“Two weeks later in the Premiership final, they couldn’t bring the same emotion and we put 40 points on them.

“So it’s hard to get yourself completely on the edge every week and I think that had to be it last week, when you saw the reaction of James Horwill after the game and what it meant. We’re disappointed and we think emotionally we can improve for it, but there is a question over whether they can do the same thing.”