The British and Irish Lions have responded to criticism after their performance manager, David Nucifora, was spotted putting a towel over a camera in their changing room during the third Test defeat to the Wallabies in Sydney. The final Test of their tour Down Under was delayed by 40 minutes after reports of lightning in the area , with both teams leaving the pitch during the break in play. At that point, the TV broadcast showed footage from both changing rooms. However, the footage from the Lions' dressing room was quickly masked as Nucifora placed a towel over the camera. His actions were met with criticism on social media, with many believing it was indicative of the Lions' attitude on this tour. The tourists have come in for criticism from Australian journalists throughout this tour for their lack of engagement with locals, while travelling journalists were also stopped from filming training sessions on tour. Posting on X, former Scotland international Jim Hamilton said: "Small things like this is why the game never went to the next level 10 years ago. It’s not his job to decide what can be seen and what’s been agreed and sold to the broadcast partner as part of the rights and access. Blows my mind." The Lions say that more broadcast access was actually granted by the team than they were actually obligated to do so, with the host broadcasters entitled to 15 minutes before the match from the dressing room cameras, 15 minutes at half-time and then 60 seconds post-match. “It’s a balance," said Lions CEO Ben Calveley. "There are certain things that you do have to protect. "But, at the same time, we want to be as open as we can. We want to be accessible and bring fans behind the curtain, or behind the towel in this case. "Of course we want that to happen, but we’ve got to respect that there is a performance aspect here. People are doing everything they can in a high pressure, intense environment to be successful on the field. "We don’t want to put people in positions that make them feel uncomfortable. We respect that balance but we do have an ambition to be as open as we can be. "Did we get the balance right? Look, we will go back and have a debrief, and take in all sort of different angles, before we make a final call on whether something is right or wrong. "What I would say is that we have worked tremendously hard to make sure this is an open and accessible tour, and I think we have achieved that." Rugby has long had a problem with engaging different markets - with recent documentaries, like Netflix's Six Nations series, failing due to a lack of access. On this tour, it has felt like the Lions have found more value to behind the scenes access through their own social media channels, where there is a greater modicum of control. "The answer to, 'Do you only want it to be open through your own channels?' is a definitive 'no'," added Calveley. "Of course there are wider channels which are really important. We are very clear on that." Former Wales wing and Lions tour manager Ieuan Evans denied that the Lions, despite largely trading on their history as a true 'touring team', can no longer have that nod to a more open and relaxed past in a modern world dominated by high performance. "There’s always that challenge – particularly in the middle of the tour – when there are matches every few days," said Evans. "So it’s straight from matches to travel days to training days to the next match and there’s not a lot of free time around that. "Going back to it, we will review this. We will speak to the players and see what their thoughts are on this. "We try wherever possible to give them as much breathing space as possible to do other things, particularly around engagement. "As Ben says, the legacy isn’t only sporting, but if you weren’t captured by the drama of that second Test at the MCG then, quite frankly, you haven’t got a soul. "That was exactly what a sporting legacy is all about, at such an iconic venue as the MCG. But it is also about the commercial and financial legacy and that’s been achieved, but there’s community and social legacy as well and we’ve tried wherever possible to leave that legacy with clubs and we’ve been to several as have the players. "There’s been the fan zone, the Lions’ Den, engaging with people who have come all this way and spent an awful lot of money to follow us. "And that’s really important. But again, we’ll assess, we’ll review, look at anything else we could do and obviously New Zealand brings different parameters around touring. "We’ll assess that and see and on top of that we’ll have player feedback and all I can say is, the smiles on people’s faces in the touring party have been hugely reassuring, it gives me great comfort. "They’ve had a great time and we’ll make sure that’s the case because that goodwill from the players, as much as everybody else, is really important and you’ve got to keep replenishing that. You can’t rely on it because hubris gets everybody eventually. "You can’t just assume that this is the norm and everybody is going to love this for eternity. We’ll look, we’ll assess, can we do things differently."