Former England captain Phil Vickery has leapt to the defence of the British and Irish Lions tour schedule amid recent criticism of the fixtures.
Many have questioned the value of the tourists' warm-up matches so far ahead of their three-Test series with Australia, after Warren Gatland's side scored 10 tries on the way to their 64-0 win over Combined Country on Tuesday.
However, Vickery is adamant that it is nearly impossible to recreate the feel of a Test series encounter in a friendly match.
"I think you can never really replicate Test match rugby until you're playing Test match teams," Vickery told City AM "All you can do is deal with what's in front of you and sometimes the motivation to play against the so-called lesser teams is actually tougher.
"How clinical can you be? How exact can you be? Can you take what you practice on the training field onto the real field, against players who are very motivated? When we won the Heineken Cup at London Wasps, we didn't have a game the week before, so we ended up playing our second team. We lost to our second team in a friendly match and went on to beat Leicester in the final.
"The Lions will be under no illusions as to what's going to be coming up in that first Test and they'll be ready for them."
The Lions face the Warratahs on Saturday.
Matt Cotton
