Brian O'Driscoll saw the British and Irish Lions post their biggest win in South Africa for 35 years, then declared: "Hopefully, it is the start of things to come."

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Ireland's Grand Slam skipper scored one of the Lions' 10 tries in a crushing 74-10 victory over the Golden Lions at Ellis Park.

"We don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but there is a huge amount of positivity," said O'Driscoll. "If you score 70 points against a Super 14 team, then someone has got to take some notice of it."

He added: "We didn't concede a point in the second half. We could have taken our foot off the gas, but we were adamant at half-time we were going to keep them scoreless."

Lions head coach Ian McGeechan admitted his team's runaway triumph had "exceeded expectations".

McGeechan said: "We were very accurate and very disciplined in what we did.

"The performance exceeded expectations. We did the right things at the right times - the players' thinking on the field was first class.

"It has given us a good sighter of what is possible, but we know we have to lift ourselves further.

"I probably wouldn't have written that score down on a piece of paper before the game, but we kept playing for 80 minutes and kept our focus."