Paul O’Connell wants his players to "keep raising the bar" to maintain the momentum the 2009 British & Irish Lions have built over their opening two victories.
Next up are the Free State Cheetahs and another thorough grilling of the Lions’ forwards credentials ahead of the three-Test Castle Series against the Springboks
But the Lions skipper has warned his players not to expect to pick up where Wednesday night’s team left off in their try fest victory over the Golden Lions.
“The win on Wednesday was a very good thing for the tour as a whole. It was a big performance and people will stand up and take a bit of notice of us now,” said O’Connell.
“After 30 minutes all the players who weren’t on the field wanted to get stuck into the next game. We brought into that game a lot of what we had been doing on the training pitch and the extra four days of training and getting used to the altitude certainly helped.
“But it’s important that we don’t think it is always going to be like Wednesday night. There are going to be days when we will have to knuckle down and dig deep.
“We played a lot of good rugby against the Golden Lions and there were a lot of good off loads, but we have to play to win first and foremost.
“One of the first things that Shaun Edwards said to us after the game in midweek was that we won’t be going out to try to play razzle-dazzle rugby to emulate the Golden Lions victory.
“The best thing for confidence and morale is winning and that’s what we need to carry on doing in Bloemfontein this weekend.”
