Wallabies call Lions coach Warren Gatland "Sideshow Gat" after his spying conspiracy theory

THE calculated "Spy Games" niggle from Lions coach Warren Gatland has earned him a new nickname as "Sideshow Gat".

Warren Gatland

THE calculated "Spy Games" niggle from Lions coach Warren Gatland has earned him a new nickname as "Sideshow Gat" now the Wallabies have laughed off his conspiracy theory.

Gatland's gamesmanship in conjuring an image of concealed video cameras and trenchcoat-wearing interlopers when the British and Irish Lions were training in Perth last week has revved up the theatre of a blockbuster tour which took off for real on Saturday night.

"We chased someone away with a video last week (in Perth)," Gatland said in the aftermath of the 22-12 spectacle against the Reds.

The savvy coach knew exactly how the worldwide rugby media would devour the tale if he offered a grab-bag of breached security and deleted video footage and mixed in the Wallabies analyst guru shooting individual footage of Lions players in the Western Force game last Tuesday.

The grenade landed on cue at the Wallabies' new camp in Caloundra yesterday where rival coach Robbie Deans swatted it harmlessly into orbit.

"It's a sideshow really. You'll have to ask Warren what the motivation is," Deans said of the spying theory being baseless.

"To a large extent you presume people are watching. You don't open the gates (to training) but we don't have a security officer either. The Lions do ... maybe that's an indicator."

Deans didn't use the word "paranoid" but it was the word that Gatland grabbed for when saying he wasn't.

"There were no spy allegations. I didn't say that at all," Gatland said.

"We threw some punter out of training and I said that the Australian team were videoing us in our game (in Perth) from the end of the field and doing some player-cams which they are perfectly entitled to do."

It's above board for Wallabies video analyst Andrew Sullivan to gather individual footage at games, rather than make do with television footage.

It's no more dastardly than the practice of Welsh goalkicker Leigh Halfpenny having his kicking coach Neil Jenkins, as water boy, standing just metres behind him as a silent guide on every shot at goal.

The Lions strength and conditioning staff asked an Aussie onlooker in Perth to delete video footage at one training.

"He was just very interested in photography and we asked him to delete it," the Lions media attache said.

It's fact that coaches go to enormous lengths to keep new lineout calls, go-to moves and tactics top secret in the lead-up to major Test matches where success or failure can be decided by a single edge turned into a decisive try.

Test coaches such as Gatland do have reason to be alert. During his time coaching Ireland in the late 1990s, a flicker was detected behind a curtain in a pre-fabricated building as the team trained in a Scottish town. Sure enough, two plods connected with the Scottish Rugby Union and their spy-cam were turfed out.

At the start of the last Lions tour in 2001, Scott Johnson, a Wallabies assistant coach-to-be, was hanging around a Lions training in Western Australia looking like a ground official.

"Oddly, they had a full out training session. I was literally sitting 3m away from everyone writing things down and taking notes," Johnson recently revealed on Fox Sports.

"It was an open training session and I was part of it."

Gatland won't allow such a similar blunder on this tour.

Leading Lions winger Tommy Bowe underwent surgery on a broken right hand yesterday and fellow Irish winger Simon Zebo in on the way to Australia as cover.