Dan Sheehan has challenged his British and Irish Lions team-mates to match the eagerness of the Western Power underdogs in Saturday’s tour opener in Australia.

Sheehan will captain a Lions group with solely two starters – Sione Tuipulotu and Tadhg Beirne – who had been within the XV for the defeat by Argentina on Friday.

“I am positive the Power will likely be 150% of what they normally are,” mentioned the 26-year-old Eire hooker.

“They are going to be flying into it and that bit of additional starvation can produce some highly effective issues.

“They might have been eyeing this sport up since they in all probability first stepped into that Western Power change room. It’s going to imply an terrible lot to them.

“However I do not need them to suppose that they will be hungrier than us. We’ve got to display again our personal mindset.”

Western Power had been the lowest-ranked Australian aspect on this 12 months’s Tremendous Rugby Pacific, however their head coach Simon Cron mentioned a lot of their preparation had concerned impressing on the gamers the magnitude of the chance.

“It is a once-in-a-lifetime for lots of those guys,” mentioned Cron.

“We sat as a gaggle and had a little bit of a yarn about how previous had been you 12 years in the past [when the Lions last toured Australia], how previous will you be 12 years from now.

“That is the significance of this sport and the particular kind of sport that it’s. They’re below no phantasm round that.”