Back in Wales colours, Gatland likened the treatment he received at the hands of a partisan Kiwi media spoonfed by the All Blacks management to a boxing match, but says it only served to steel him. What didn’t kill him has only served to make him stronger for round two in Cardiff.

“I know it was tough and said it was tough. It was challenging from a personal perspective but Kiwis understand when you back a Kiwi into a corner we come out fighting,” said Gatland.

“There is no way I was going to allow something to get the better of me. I got mentally tougher. I kind of felt like I was in a boxing match and was going to come out on top of this.

“I enjoyed that challenge, I enjoyed thinking that no one was going to get the better of me, or anyone was going to split the squad or try to create controversy.

“There was some pretty underhand stuff going on. It was challenging. There are one or two people I would like to get into a corner of a room on their own with me, but that might wait for another day.

“I had not expected that personal criticism right from day one. It was a good experience for me. It made me stronger, dig deeper, made me more resilient and want to fight harder in New Zealand as the Lions coach.

“That has gone now and it is about Wales and the All Blacks this week and us trying to turn around and get a victory against the All Blacks, which we haven’t had since 1953.”

Gatland claimed in his post-tour book that he knew things about the All Blacks that could be “explosive if made public”.

He declined to go into detail yesterday but there is no doubt he was bruised by the summer experience and would like nothing better than putting one over on Steve Hansen and New Zealand.

The evidence of Scotland’s near-miss at the weekend suggests a shock is possible at the Principality Stadium, although the history books say loudly otherwise.

“You watch Scotland and you can take some positives out of that performance but don’t expect that New Zealand aren’t going to improve from that and have some severe criticism from their coaches,” warned Gatland.

“This is their last game in the series so we expect the All Blacks team to front up, hurting a little bit knowing that they haven’t played to their potential.

“We’ve got to build from the second half against Australia when we were pretty good and go and play against the best team in the world and put them under some pressure.”

The dismal contest against Georgia last weekend has been conveniently forgotten, although the stench of the scrum controversy which erupted afterwards lingers on.

Although no action looks likely to be taken against Wales, the observation from former Welsh prop Adam Jones that they “pulled the fastest one ever” in thwarting Georgia’s chances of a match-equalising penalty try late on has left them embarrassed.

Gatland insisted yesterday it was cramp rather than managerial sleight of hand which prevented prop Leon Brown returning to the pitch and stopped the Lelos deploying their scrum weapon.

“I can assure you from my point of view as an ex-front-row player the last thing we would want to do is try and manipulate the laws,” said Gatland.

“The message from us was put Leon back on but it came back to us that his calves weren’t right so with two tight-heads unavailable we thought we were going to uncontested scrums.

“It wasn’t us trying to pull a fast one or anything like that.”