It’s one-dimensional and boring for critics to keep moaning about Warrenball

Back then Smith wrote a column damning Gatland’s Lions with faint praise, calling their preference for powerful strike runners like Jamie Roberts and George North a “straightforward but highly effective strategy”, but implying it was one-dimensional and boring.

Alas, in the Third Test the Australian-born Smith was proven more correct than he might have wished, as Roberts and North scored the tries that gave the Lions a straightforward, highly effective 41-16 win, and their first series victory since 1997.

This capped a successful cycle for Gatland teams, after Wales reached the 2011 World Cup semi-finals, then won a 2012 Six Nations Grand Slam and defended their title in 2013.

Not bad going. Indeed, in terms of coaching achievement in the northern hemisphere this century, Gatland stands on a par with Sir Clive Woodward. Yes, Woodwardball won a World Cup but Sir Clive’s Lions were crushed in New Zealand in 2005.

Since 2013 Wales have stuttered but Gatland’s track record, talent and polite toughness do not merit the snide criticism he often receives, still less the lazy use of ‘Warrenball’ as an insult.

Last month the 2005 Lion Shane Horgan (record: four caps as substitute, no wins) asked whether Gatland had the “playbook” or the “flexibility” to succeed, and suggested that the coach was “the weakest link on the tour”.

This would be offensive if it wasn’t so bloody dumb. Gatland has given as much to the Lions as anyone except Sir Ian McGeechan. Aside from McGeechan and Syd Millar, indeed, he is the only man alive to have coached a Lions side to victory.

It would have been a lot easier for him not to have taken 41 players from four different countries on the most ridiculously scheduled Lions tour of all time to his homeland: the hardest rugby country in the world.

But there he is, ensuring that the Lions respect their hosts while trying to fast-track his players into shape to compete with the best Super Rugby sides and, soon enough, the All Blacks. Lord, his team even won a match the other day, against a fired-up NZ Barbarians side who might have shocked a less robust and even more jetlagged team.

The Lions players who stood out in that match were Ben Te’o, Taulupe Faletau, Ross Moriarty and Kyle Sinckler, who happened to be more or less the most powerful and direct players in red shirts.

The Barbarians commented afterwards on how tough the match was. Weird, that. It’s almost like rugby is a physical game.

Tomorrow against the Blues Gatland has asked for “positive rugby” and picked a XV including Elliot Daly, Justin Tipuric, Maro Itoje and Rhys Webb: four of the most dynamic players in his squad.

Yet still he is asked to defend ‘Warrenball’ — and people seem surprised when he gets narky.

In 2005 Tana Umaga, now the Blues coach, took part in an infamous challenge on Brian O’Driscoll which put the-then Lions captain in hospital and could have paralysed him. Umaga still sulks when he is asked about it. How much less within his rights is he than Gatland, who is asked to defend his coaching style as though it were a crime against aesthetics and slander against rugby?

Win or lose, the Lions head coach deserves much, much better.