Warren Gatland believes the Lions players and supporters were admired in New Zealand on their 2005 tour despite the team's poor results.

Warren Gatland has scoffed at suggestions New Zealand will be full of hostility towards his British and Irish Lions team on next year's tour.

Kiwi Gatland was confirmed for his third campaign with the Lions on Thursday (NZ time). He will be head coach in New Zealand, having been an assistant in South Africa in 2009 and head coach in Australia in 2013 where the Lions beat the Wallabies in the test series.

Gatland got the job amidst warnings from Andy Robinson, an assistant on the last Lions tour of New Zealand in 2005, where he said the combined side were under relentless pressure off the field - "You know that everybody wants to beat you ... not just the players and staff but the government, the local shopkeepers, the children ... and they will do whatever they can to do it."

"That's not my experience," Gatland told Walesonline when that notion was put to him.

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"I look back, having gone there and been at the games in 2005, what the New Zealand public learned from the Lions supporters was how to support a team.

"It wasn't the most successful tour, but they admired just how faithful the Lions supporters were; following the team, singing, chanting and getting behind the players.

"The talk in New Zealand is that people are incredibly excited about it, they're looking forward to next year and the games.

"I've got a lot of friends that are travelling around - I don't think you can get a motor home in New Zealand."

Gatland said the most difficult part of touring New Zealand was simply the high standard of rugby here.

"It is a really tough country to go and tour and I didn't learn that until I left there," he said.

"As a Kiwi, when you travel around the country playing provincial rugby, you just take it as being part of it.

"But when you go back there as an overseas coach you realise it's a pretty tough environment."

He admitted it would be an eye-opener for players touring New Zealand the first time, particularly in a high-profile side like the Lions.

"They've got to understand there are certain challenges when you go there," he explained to Walesonline.

"First of all there are welcomes, you go to the powhiri, they'll sing and we've got to respond with singing, so we're probably going to have to put a choir together and practice a few songs.

"So lots of those things culturally, probably understanding things about the country."

He said the excitment for the Lions visit was also evident in the All Blacks.

"If you look at the All Blacks as a squad, they were able to retain a number of players who were given opportunities to go and play overseas because, for them, it's a once in a lifetime chance to face the Lions."