Warren Gatland cartoon clown gag leaves red faces all around

There is a song by the Kinks called Death of a Clown, which seems rather apt in the wake of a New Zealand newspaper’s caricature of the head coach of the British & Irish Lions with white paint and a red nose.

Even more on the money are the opening couplets which read: “My makeup is dry and it cracks round my chin/I’m drowning my sorrows in whiskey and gin /The lion-tamer’s whip doesn’t crack anymore / The lions they won’t fight and the tigers won’t roar.”

Three days after Warren Gatland called on his players to show some fight and pride after being outmuscled by the All Blacks, the Lions head coach found himself done up for the second time in the past eight months as a glum purveyor of circus high-jinks.