• After last month's fire pit catastrophe in Ireland, rugby player Damian de Allende expressed his thankfulness for being back on the field
• The midfielder said that the experience shocked him and made him realise how much worse things could have been
• Damian is now looking ahead to Saturday's first rugby test against the Lions and admits that the consistency in his selection is encouraging

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Last month, while still on duty for Irish rugby club Munster, Damian De Allende and injured lock RG Snyman were victims of a bizarre fire pit accident.

This resulted in them sustaining significant burns that caused their return to South Africa to be delayed and their participation against the British & Irish Lions to be seriously questioned.

Despite the fact that he had to play two matches in one week, De Allende was able to restore match fitness after the incident. De Allende said that he was lucky to have recovered and is grateful to still be here, according to News24.

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Damian de Allende feels that he's lucky to be able to play again

"I'm very glad that I got through some game minutes over the past week. It was tough to play two games in one week, I haven't done that in a long time. But it was good," he said."After it happened I did go into a bit of shock and I was in hospital on morphine and it was tough," said the rugby player, according to SkySports.

The player didn't want to talk about what happened in too much detail but said that the incident left him shaken.

De Allende played for South Africa A against the Lions in a warm-up match last week and is one of 21 members of the 2019 Rugby World Cup-winning squad included in Jacques Nienaber's 23-man squad to face the tourists.

The Springboks beat the British & Irish Lions 17-13

Rassie Erasmus, the coach of the South African ‘A' squad that beat the British & Irish Lions 17-13 in Cape Town on Wednesday, claimed his players ran out of energy but not of heart, which proved decisive in a match they really wanted to win.

In a virtual news conference with SA ‘A' captain Lukhanyo Am, SA Rugby's director of rugby said the match went just as they intended.

“We expected our guys to run out of steam at the end after being stuck in our hotel rooms for a week and we only had two training sessions together as a team,” said Erasmus.

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