Mike Blair, the Scotland scrum-half, reports on the mood in the British and Irish Lions camp as they aim to salvage pride from South Africa following the second Test setback. They face the Springboks for the third and final time in Johannesburg this weekend.

I suppose the first thing I should talk about is the test match which was one of the best games that I’ve watched. The intensity and some of the hits going in were incredible.

I thought the Lions played some pretty good stuff but the Springboks showed what a class side they are and how experienced they are to come back into the game. With just ten minutes to go they were able to get themselves into good field position and score a good try at the end. Then Morne Steyn came on. The crowd had been chanting his name from about half-time because he’s a Blue Bulls player and since we were playing at Loftus (the Bulls’ home ground) he got a great reception we he came on and gave the perfect response by kicking the winning goal.

It’s safe to say everybody was pretty gutted in the changing room when we went it in. It’s always awkward going into the changing room when you weren’t involved and you’ve lost the game. Everyone was absolutely distraught with the knowledge that the Series had gone. The guys didn’t really speak for about half an hour after the match. It was pretty tough to take.

We had Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off because the test was such a brutal game. A lot of the guys had bumps and bruises and I think that the coaches felt that it was needed to freshen them up a bit..

On Sunday we went to Entabeni Safari Park which was an incredible place, right beside a big lake where we went on a couple of game trips and amongst a host of wildlife we got to see the rear end of a Lion! We were quite unlucky with that one actually because the group in the car in front of us had been within six or seven metres of a pride of five or six lions and since we were a bit late we didn’t really see them. But we did see some elephants, a lot of wildebeest, springboks – a fair bit really – and at the end a few of the guys were allowed in with one of the two year old lions which admittedly I didn’t fancy too much! The lion, all be it reared in captivity, was jumping up and down all over them so a few of guys including Fordy went in there. It was quite amazing to watch really.

We go back into training with a slightly longer double-session on Wednesday where we worked on a couple of things that didn’t go so well against the South Africans as well as a couple of plays that we think we could put on the Springboks after doing the analysis of the previous two tests.

For me personally my tour has kind of wound down. With nothing left to play for it’s a hard one to take for those guys not selected but the important thing is to try and help the test squad prepare as well as possible and try and stay positive about the whole thing.

We’ve only got four days until we go back home, the time has really flown by, it’s amazing to think that it was seven weeks ago that we all first met back in London.

Mike Blair

Scotland captain