British and Irish Lions coach Warren Gatland during his press conference in Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Warren Gatland opens up in an interview with the Daily Mail about the heavy criticism back in New Zealand and Irish flanker Sean O'Brien's criticism of his training methods.
Warren Gatland is talking about his hurt locker.
When he says he was shocked by the volleys of contempt and vitriol that flew at him from the pages of the local papers during the British & Irish Lions tour of New Zealand in June, I tell him I'm surprised that he was surprised.
It's a cheap, easy line but many of the great leaders in sport have thick hides. Gatland is different.
I mention the treatment meted out to Stuart Broad by the Brisbane Courier-Mail before the first Test of the 2013-14 Ashes series when the paper refused even to mention his name.
And I remind Gatland that England were mocked for their reliance on Jonny Wilkinson by the Sydney Morning Herald during the 2003 World Cup. 'Is that all you've got?' one headline said.
It's easy to say all that as we sit in a cool, quiet room in a London office block on the banks of the River Thames. It's easy when you are not the subject of the front-page lampoons that targeted Gatland or the headlines that went for his family as well as his professional reputation.
It's easy when it wasn't you who pulled off one of the great achievements of modern rugby and were savaged for it.
Gatland smiles and says that maybe he was naive but, yes, he thought that the fact that he was a Kiwi coming home at the head of the most famous touring party in world sport might have made the media behave more generously.
He thought too much of people and they let him down.
He singles out one headline that took him aback because it was so personal. 'The sad unravelling of Warren Gatland,' it said.
And then there was the one that was printed on the eve of the Lions' clash against the New Zealand Provincial Barbarians, whose side included Gatland's son, Bryn. 'Gatland to target Barbarians' weakest link - his son,' that headline said.
It wears him down, all that. He talks about Warrenball, too. He says he doesn't know what it means. I have heard him say that before. He knows what it means all right. He just hates what it means.
He hates its implication that he is a limited, pragmatic, one-dimensional coach whose sides are not easy on the eye. He hates how lazy it is and how dismissive it is and how disrespectful it is.
We talk about Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho and how many people deify Guardiola for his refusal to compromise his style of football and damn Mourinho with faint praise because he is intent on finding a way to win even it means winning ugly.
Gatland can relate to that. He can see the seeds of the Warrenball label in that analogy.
And as we talk, I start to regret saying I was surprised he was surprised. He is a decent man, Gatland, and criticism stings him more than it stings many others.
It is one of the things that defines him. Gatland was hurt by what happened in New Zealand. He is still hurt now. And when you think about it, actually, who can blame him?
His diary of the thrilling drawn series against the All Blacks, is called In the Line of Fire, which says it all.
It is the same title that film producers chose more than 20 years ago for a movie about a secret service agent who takes bullets for a living.
Other men might have called it My Triumph Against All Odds. Which is what it was. But Gatland was not elated by it. He was bruised by it.
The New Zealand Herald gave him the Turnip Taylor treatment and dressed him up as a clown. The bruising got worse when he returned to the UK.
Gatland, who has now resumed his job as Wales head coach, should have been hailed a hero for holding the back-to-back world champions on their home turf, where they are all but invincible, and breathing new life into the Lions concept despite being allowed the absolute minimum preparation time. That did not happen.
Instead, a few weeks ago, Sean O'Brien, the Irish flanker who had a fine tour, lambasted Gatland and his coaching team in a radio interview and said the Lions should have won the series 3-0. Gatland took it hard.
He told the media he had hated coaching the Lions in New Zealand. He said he did not want to be considered for the post again.
O'Brien finally summoned the decency to return Gatland's calls last week and the two men had a frank discussion about the Irishman's criticisms, which centred on the fact that the Lions had trained too hard in the first week of the tour.
Gatland accepted the criticism had some validity but he was not mollified. He achieved something outstanding in New Zealand and O'Brien stained it.
Gatland says in his book that O'Brien was his player of the tour but he is scathing about him now. He does not pull his punches. There are things he will not say about aspects of O'Brien's conduct in New Zealand but he hints at them.
"My thing to Sean," says Gatland, "is, if he can look himself in the mirror and say 'I was the most professional person on tour, on and off the field, in New Zealand', in terms of the way he prepared himself, then I think his points would be more valid.
"I was disappointed with his comments. I thought him coming out and saying we should have won 3-0 was pretty disrespectful to New Zealand. That's where he lost his credibility.
"He came out and he was critical but what was his solution? There was nothing. It was words without a solution. If you are going to come out and say something, give us what the answer is.
"When I spoke to Sean last week I said the ironic thing was that he came to us injured at the start of the tour and his injury record over the last number of years has been pretty abysmal in terms of getting a string of games together.
"I reminded him that in his interview, he said he was in the best shape of his life during the Tests so we must have done something right surely. And he said: 'I never thought of that'. "
If Gatland's opinion of O'Brien has hardened, he has had time to reconsider what he said about never coaching the Lions again. His stance has mellowed.
He will not go as far as actually putting his name forward for the tour to South Africa in 2021 but he is no longer adamant he wants nothing more to do with the Lions.
"My experience of a Lions tour," he says, "is that there is no pressure on the players. You go out there and fail as a player and you have got the luxury of sauntering back to your club or your national team or whatever.
"But if you fail as part of a coaching set-up, the finger is pointed at you. That is what makes it so challenging and so tough. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah, it's a hard job to turn down and walk away from. I made those comments about not wanting to do it again because I was pretty hurt.
"There is a cynical part of me that thinks let someone else go and do it and when he fails people might say 'Oh, actually, it's a little bit harder than I thought it was'.
"As far as me coaching the Lions again, never say never. There is a lot of water under the bridge. The way I was feeling when I said what I said.
"The biggest thing for me is that other players have been positive in their comments. There are a lot of people who disagree with what Sean said."
Maybe the issue is just that, like so many of the best coaches in sport, Gatland divides opinion. Some rate him as the greatest rugby coach of his generation. Others say that is absurd.
Some say he has used the limited talent pool he has at his disposal in Wales brilliantly. Others say he stifled it with Warrenball.
When Gatland announced his squad for Wales' autumn internationals against Australia, Georgia, New Zealand and South Africa last week, his selections led some to suggest he had ditched Warrenball.
That raises rather a bitter smile with Gatland. Warrenball, by the way, is in the hurt locker, too.
"What is Warrenball?" he says. "I don't know. We used to joke that Warrenball should be Winningball because look at all the trophies over the years with Wasps and Waikato and Wales and whatever. Whatever it is, it's been successful.
"People assume it's using big men to get across the advantage line. And you look at it and you go 'Well, that's what the game is, isn't it?'"
"We had a group of players who came on to the scene in Wales who happened to be quite big, physical men: Jamie Roberts, George North, Jonathan Davies.
"The fact that we used those players to get on the front foot and try and get quick ball and play off that, that connotation of the Warrenball phrase stuck.
"I find it fascinating. You ask people what it is and they can't tell you. They've got no idea. They just say it's using big men to run forward. Well doesn't every team use that? It's an easy throwaway line for someone to say but what is it?
"I understand the point about Guardiola and Mourinho. Everyone would say Mourinho would first of all set up a solid defensive platform and make a team hard to beat and hit you on the counter.
"And Guardiola would say: 'I'll score more goals than you'. Another good example of that would be (Roberto) Martinez with Everton.
"We all get caught up in that and the fans say: 'We don't want to play this way, we want exciting football'. Then the next year, you get relegated and it costs you millions of pounds because you went out to play fancy football but you didn't have the players to do it.
"Ask me: playing attractively or winning? I would take winning every day of the week. Maybe that's where that phrase about Warrenball comes in.
"Because when you are talking about Wales, we have got a very limited pool of players and sometimes you have got to be practical.
"Sometimes you have got to realise we haven't got the skill level and certain players to be able to do that, so we have to make the most of what we've got.
"Maybe at times, it has been a bigger, more physical player that has been more practical than someone smaller, who hasn't got the same skill levels as well.
"A couple of years ago - you know how dumb people are - we came out and said we had changed the way we were going to play and then we scored a couple of great tries and everyone said it was 'brilliant that Wales have changed the way they are playing' but we just played exactly the same way.
"We just said we were playing differently. No one knew."
Sometimes, Gatland wonders whether he has been with Wales too long. He took over as the coach in the principality in 2007 and led them to Grand Slams in 2008 and 2012 and another Six Nations title in 2013.
His goal now is to take the Welsh to World Cup glory in Japan in 2019 and then walk away.
"I think it is a realistic ambition to win the World Cup in 2019," he says. "I recognise that I have been at Wales a long time and should I have left earlier? There is an argument about that.
"Have I been at Wales for too long? Possibly. But we are in a professional sport and my current contract means that by finishing in 2019, there is a significant fee for having done that period, a loyalty bonus basically, yeah.
"You have to weigh up your age and your future in the profession and walking away from those sorts of things.
"But in saying that, the profile that we tried to create for this team is perfect going into a World Cup in terms of the experience that we will have, players with the number of caps and the age profile and some quality youngsters coming through.
"The great example of that is England in 2003. I think they were a better team in 2002. We feel we'll be there. We know in previous World Cups, when we have done well, it's because of the time we have had together.
"The downside for Wales is that we can't pick up too many injuries because of the lack of depth.
"But we will be well prepared. For a lot of these players, it will be their last World Cup. My previous experience with them, they never complain about working hard, they will work harder than most other teams and will turn up for the World Cup in great shape physically."
He insists he does not have a grand plan to coach the All Blacks but he acknowledges that if Wales do well at the World Cup and he then enjoys some success coaching, say, a team in Super Rugby, then 'maybe you might get the opportunity.
"It is just one step at a time and if you do well on the way, other doors open hopefully. That is my philosophy".
And so we have almost come full circle. Gatland has a dinner that evening that he agreed to attend as part of a prize to raise money for charity.
Before he goes, I mention that All Blacks coach Steve Hansen had said the day before that Gatland shouldn't have done the Lions job if he hated it.
"When I said what I said," Gatland says, "I didn't mean I hated every moment of it. There were special moments.
"But I always found as a Kiwi that we have prided ourselves on being humble and fair and accepting, and when that didn't happen, that was what I wasn't expecting.
"I'm sure when Steve Hansen was coaching Wales to 11 defeats in a row, he wasn't enjoying that too much, either."
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