In The Daily Telegraph, Brendan Gallagher casts his eye over some of the Lions' past tour openers.
"The last British and Irish Lions team to lose their tour opener was the 1971 party coached by Carwyn James, but they went on to become the second greatest squad ever to leave these shores, so, clearly, all is not lost should the Lions suffer a similar fate in Rustenburg on Saturday, when they take on a Royal XV.
"The 1971 defeat to a fired-up Queensland, on the tour of Australia and New Zealand, was amateurish and careless in the extreme, but, in retrospect, acted as the perfect wake-up call for the talented squad.
"The tourists had stopped off in Hong Kong on the way there for a night out and arrived in tropical Brisbane only 36 hours before kick-off. A mix of jet lag and hangovers saw the out-of-sorts Lions lose 15-11.
"They were little better a few days later when scraping a win against New South Wales, but during the old-style, three-month tours a team had time to play themselves into form. The Lions' struggle to beat a modest Australian side led the Kiwis to become overconfident."
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