Tadhg Beirne admits being forced to self-isolate created a mental challenge as the British and Irish Lions emerged undeterred from one of the most chaotic weeks in their history.
Beirne was among the large group of personnel who were forced to quarantine in the rooms of their Johannesburg hotel on Wednesday following two positive tests for coronavirus.
Forty-eight hours later the close contacts of the player who subsequently produced two negative results were able to rejoin the rest of the touring party.
"I had to watch it from the room but very much enjoyed the lads going out there and putting in a serious shift.
"It wasn't actually until Friday that we got out, I think we needed two negatives on the Thursday and the Friday, so we were isolating until the Friday afternoon. We had a pretty late extended captain's run on the Friday.
"It was quite up in the air until then and when we got the news, we were all delighted to finally get out of the rooms and we were raring to go.
"You could see that in our captain's run, lads were probably getting a bit too excited after getting out of isolation for a few days in their rooms.
"It probably didn't go into the game too well. We didn't start the way we wanted to but we managed to finish well and that was the main thing."
