Gregor Paul: Lions tour flirting with disaster

For a squad that came to New Zealand determined to avoid making the same mistakes as their 2005 predecessors, the 2017 British & Irish Lions seem to be meekly moving towards repeating that dark history all over again.

Just as happened 12 years ago, the tour is starting to flirt with disaster. This time the Lions are in danger of splitting into two distinct parties with the midweek crew left to their own devices and the test group firmly established as their own entity.

That's a scenario coach Warren Gatland said he was determined to avoid when he touched down in New Zealand a couple of weeks ago - even having a dig at his predecessor, Graham Henry, who made that mistake when the Lions toured Australia in 2001.

And now, with the Lions having only won two of their four games so far and a clear gulf having emerged between what everyone would consider their test group and the midweek crew, Gatland appears to have resigned himself to acknowledging as much internally.

According to All Blacks coach Steve Hansen, the Lions have sent for five reinforcements. They already have 40 players here and the extras are coming to enable the Lions to train as two full, separate squads.

Well, that's what Hansen reckons, but the Lions, clearly surprised and no doubt massively irritated that the All Blacks coach knows their plans, have refused to say anything about the additions.

Irritated because Gatland most likely hasn't sat the whole squad down yet and explained the move. It's never good when players read about major changes rather than hear them directly from their own coach.

Looks bad. Looks sinister. Looks a lot like the coach might be losing it and in this case, it also looks a lot like Gatland has given up on at least half the squad.

And he probably has. The mob that played in Dunedin were poor. Excuses can be made for the team losing to the Blues and playing so badly against the New Zealand Provincial Barbarians, but four games into the tour, the performance against the Highlanders was simply not good enough.

For the first time since the Lions arrived, Gatland didn't offer up mitigating circumstances for the performance.

His body language said it all: he was clearly disappointed that the scrum was destroyed and having gone 22-13 up midway through the second half, the midweek Lions wilted fast down the home straight.

Not good enough and for all the nonsense about Super Rugby sides and the All Blacks being much the same thing, Gatland isn't silly enough to try to kid himself into believing that. He can spin that line to others, not himself.

He knows that a Highlanders side missing nine players should have been toasted by his Lions and that they weren't, has left him with problems.

So he's taking a big risk. He's going to gamble with the harmony of the wider squad, give up on the midweekers and essentially throw everything he can into preparing the test team.

There will be some - maybe 23 - unhappy Lions who will feel they have been mis-sold an adventure to New Zealand.

They were promised a fair crack at test football only to arrive in New Zealand and find out they were here to make up the numbers.

While Gatland fulfilled his promise of giving everyone time in the first three games, the team he picked to play the Crusaders has magically transpired to be the test team.

Everyone can see now that Gatland had a fixed idea about his probable test line-up, certainly the match day 23, before he arrived and yet there were all the promises of open minds and clean slates.

It's a holiday nightmare for those rejected: a classic case of the brochure showing an alluring slice of paradise when in fact the hotel is half built and the pool has green things floating in it.

But what really sucks for the midweekers, is that they will be expected to toe the party line, talk of their unfailing support for the wider group and be told every day by management that they are contributing to the mission of beating the All Blacks even though they quite clearly aren't.