MUNSTER'S Peter O'Mahony will captain the British & Irish Lions against the Maori All-Blacks at Rotorua International Stadium on Saturday, 8.35am Irish time.
MAORI ALL BLACKS: James Lowe, Nehe Milner-Skudder, Matt Proctor, Charlie Ngatai, Rieko Ioane, Damian McKenzie, Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Liam Messam, Elliot Dixon, Akira Ioane, Tom Franklin, Joe Wheeler, Ben May, Ash Dixon (c), Kane Hames.
Replacements: K Owens, J McGrath, K Sinckler, I Henderson, S Warburton, G Laidlaw, O Farrell, E Daly.
Ireland loose forward CJ Stander put his name into the mix with a titanic performance at number eight, while tour captain Sam Warburton grew into the game and was much better in the second half.
McKenzie, who played two tests for the All Blacks past year, was surprisingly overlooked for Steve Hansen's main test squad for the Lions series starting June 24.
Owen Farrell will miss Saturday's British and Irish Lions match against Maori All Blacks because of a quad strain.
It was widely assumed the Lions would roll out their first-choice side to take on the New Zealand Maori in Rotorua on Saturday, but Gatland ended up springing a couple of surprises in the side he named on Thursday.
Having fallen to defeats to the Blues and the Highlanders, the task awaiting Warren Gatland's men at Eden Park on 24 June looks taller than ever, but Carter has seen enough in the Lions to believe they'll be ready. With Johnny Sexton given the nod at fly-half, the Irishman appears to have a strong chance of claiming the Test shirt, despite Farrell being the odds-on favourite to start against the All Blacks before suffering the injury.
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Mexico had a solid start to its Confederations Cup campaign, drawing 2-2 to Portugal in the first match day of the competition. Commenting on the match results , Akinfeev said "unfortunately we lost, but there were no apathetic players on the field".
The Lions have won two and lost two of their four tour games and Jenkins added: "We're expecting a tough, physical, fast game of rugby, like another Test match".
"There's a little bit of juggling going on at the moment, a bit of mixing and matching", Gatland said.
"Rhys just has a haematoma, he's fine", said Gatland.
"I think the way he controlled the game in that first 20 minutes against Crusaders just showed (Farrell) gets the best out of the players around him".
He told reporters: "Johnny needs some more rugby and he's got a bit of his mojo back, so we wanted to give him a start".
"The good thing about this is we're going to learn a lot more from a game where we lose by one point than win by 60", he said.
"We need to play like we did last Saturday against the Crusaders", assistant coach Neil Jenkins said.
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