Lions flanker clears air with Warren Gatland after saying side 'overtrained'

British & Irish Lions player Sean O'Brien looks to take on the All Blacks defence. Photo / Alan Gibson.

Irish flanker Sean O'Brien says he has cleared the air with Lions coach Warren Gatland after criticising some coaching decisions during the June tour of New Zealand.

O'Brien last month said the British and Irish Lions would have won the June series against the All Blacks 'comfortably' if it wasn't for overtraining.

O'Brien started in all three tests of the drawn series which ended with a controversial 15-15 draw at Eden Park.

The 30-year-old, who has played 49 tests for Ireland and five for the Lions, said Gatland and the Lions coaching staff mis-managed the training schedule during the five week tour.

"There's the best players in the world on a Lions tour. I know you are playing the best team in the world but with the quality and strength in depth we had, we probably should have won the tour. It wasn't down to fatigue. It was probably management a bit, in terms of how our weeks went," O'Brien said in an interview with Irish radio station Newstalk last month.

"The first week, we definitely over-trained on the Thursday and maybe the coaches were panicking a little bit about getting the information into us. On the first week [of the first Test], we had a triple [session] day, [the] lads' legs were heavy on the Thursday and we were playing the All Blacks on Saturday."

Overnight O'Brien said he talked to Gatland yesterday on the phone to explain a lot of positives things he said about the tour were omitted from his interview.

"I said what I said to try and make things better going forward. It's put to bed. You know, there's not much more really left to say on it.'

"The conversation went very well and it was very relaxed and I said exactly what I said and he had no problem with it either. He obviously said that he was a little bit disappointed that it could have been dealt with in a different way but, I explained my situation and I explained as well about the amount of positives I had mentioned in that whole interview but, it wasn't portrayed that way," O'Brien said at a One Zero conference in Dublin.

"(At the end of the call) I said 'I'll see ya in a couple of months for a pint'".

Gatland told the Radio Sport Breakfast today that he didn't think the side over-trained but agreed parts of the schedule were too demanding.

"Sean O'Brien wasn't critical of myself. He made a couple of points in terms of he felt we overtrained in the first week," Gatland said.

"I've looked back on that, we didn't overtrain but I'm disappointed in myself. We were a bit heavy legged for that first week. I look back and was it a combination of arriving in New Zealand on a Wednesday, playing a game three days later on the Saturday where we're struggling with jetlag the first week or so.

"We didn't have any days off before the first test, apart from travel days. We'd been in 10 hotels in two weeks...yeah we probably were pretty heavy legged as a result of that. I was more disappointed with myself and I mentioned that after the second test. "