Louis Rees-Zammit may well be right

He suggested that Gatland had the wrong game plan for the Lions tour.

Some will say (which is typical how people interpret), it was sour grapes as Gatland left him out and he's only 20 years old...what does he know but I think he might be right. He is a brilliant footballer and one of the best wingers around despite his age. My personal view is he is a legend in the making...some of the best tries I've seen from Wales.

Gatland took SA on the physical game...I don't know why as they have good backline players...for what reasons ? Some of you here remarked that they were the worst Br/Ireland players ever, no that's not true if you look at lesser games they have played in...the Irish Club/Franchise sides have whipped all the SA teams, even Scots Edinburgh in the ongoing club championship..well lets put that down to just speculating talk but on the otherhand there are too, sound reasons for this assumption, at least I think so. I know a lot will perhaps dispute this. Saffex, Becs what is your take on this?

He said :

“I don’t want to be the b***h but I just thought we had the wrong gameplan, to be honest. If we’d played a bit of rugby I think we could have given them a better test but we ended up falling into their gameplan and that cost us the series,” Rees-Zammit told Robert Kitson. “I obviously wasn’t suited to the gameplan they went with. If we’d played more attacking rugby I’d like to think I’d have been in with a chance but they wanted physicality.

“It was ‘who can kick more?’ That’s the last thing I wanted. I wanted ball in space, which was exactly what Finn Russell wanted as well.

“I personally think we could have played any gameplan. We had wingers with pace, we had wingers with physicality, we had centres with pace and we had a range of 10s who could have done anything.

“That was probably the worst bit. Everyone thought we could have done a bit more in terms of playing. You heard it from fans and people who weren’t there.

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“They just wish we’d played a bit more rugby, as opposed to sitting back and trying to play their game. We tried to stick with our plan but it didn’t end up working.”

The 20-year-old had previously told RugbyPass of his frustrations on tour, referring to himself as among the ‘bin juice’ who didn’t get a chance in the Test series.

If the Allblacks barely beat is with a "bit more rugby", the Lions had no hope...Wales beat us more than they lose playing Warren-ball...it was their best chance, that's why Gatland  was appointed...., but we were better at it than they were...barely but solidly...another match and we would have totally dominated...Aus is good, but they got a bit lucky...we are a difficult team to put away...go ask the Allblacks.

I don’t think it was a great team we sent out there and the game plan was wrong, in my opinion. 

The weird thing is Gatland claimed he chose players ‘who could run into space’  rather than those who took contact. One of the frequently cited reasons why Stampkar was left out. And then he played Stampkar rugby. I think he was bamboozled from the moment we played a Springbok team in the ‘A’ game.

The Boks folded like a deck of cards on the gainline. The Lions absolutely hammered the Bok pack. It came down to the high ball and biased reffing. Malherbe alone was a penalty machine never properly reffed.

As per the All Blacks "just beating the Boks". Do note that the All Blacks had around 10 try scoring opportunities they uncharacteristically blew. Before the second half of the second test it was looking like a white wash. The flaccid and weak Bok defence needs a rope-a-dope to stay in the game: penalties and the opposition faltering under the high ball. It bleeds the clock and keeps the opposition tighed up in their half of the field. As teams get back to where they were post-covid interruption, the Boks will be left further behind. The Boks without the ref in their pocket would have one win this season.