Scotland captain Mike Blair updates the Scottish Rugby website with his latest blog from the British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa as the first Test looms large on the horizon.

My wife and my mum and dad are arriving in South Africa this week along with what seems like thousands of other British and Irish Lions supporters and that can only mean one thing – the first Test against the Springboks is next up.

We arrive at that point with a played six won six record but no-one will remember much about that if we don’t get off to a winning start in the Test series.

I’ve started two of the games – against the Royal XV and then earlier this week against the Southern Kings – and such is the competition that to force yourself into Test contention that you can’t expect to do that through having a “just ok” game – especially having not been selected in the original squad back in April - you need to really excel, and I've not done that yet.

Since my last blog I’ve had a bit of an injury concern which meant I had to withdraw from bench duty against Western Province last weekend.

We were doing counter-attacks from kicks in training last Friday when I found myself at outside centre.  The pass I got was a little bit behind me and in trying to take it I rolled my ankle.  It was five seconds of excruciating pain but the medics were superb.

They put me in one of those moon boots, non weight bearing, and though I felt at the time that it was a bit over the top, it really made a massive difference in accelerating my recovery.

I was still hopeful of being fit for the bench on that Friday night but when I wakened on the Saturday I couldn’t put any weight on it.

It didn’t really cross my mind that “that’s my tour over” or anything like that, but I was a bit concerned knowing how quickly the next big game was coming – Tuesday’s against the Southern Kings.

In any event I got two days of intensive physiotherapy from Phil Pask and by Monday I was pretty convinced that I was going to be fine.  I did part of the team run on Monday and in spite of it being a “pretty physical” game against the Southern Kings I came through it without any ill-effects. As I hadn't been able to take part in the rugby training, my training for the game involved wearing an altitude mask and cycling for 20 minutes at 5000ft which was interesting - give me rugby training any day!

I’ve been keeping an eye on the progress of Scotland A in the IRB Nations Cup in Bucharest and it was encouraging to read some of the media reports suggesting my brother David had been in good form in the win over Uruguay. I've been keeping in touch with him and Simon Webster on skype and it sounds like they are having a great time and the rugby has been hard going in 38 degrees heat! I had an interesting conversation with Ross Ford on the topic of Bucharest. He actually thought it was pronounced Budapest and it took a lot to convince him that it was actually another city altogether in Hungary and was spelt and pronounced totally different. Nice one Ross, good luck in your Standard Grades when you get back from the tour.

Anyway, good luck to the boys in the decider against France A on Sunday night.

Back here in Durban though the focus is on Saturday’s Test with South Africa and whoever is handed the responsibility of wearing the Lions jersey for that game knows what’s required.

Mike Blair

Scotland captain