Warren Gatland won’t rush Robbie Henshaw back into action after the Ireland centre suffered a hamstring injury after starring in the Lions’ opener against Japan last week.

Although he stressed the injury is “very, very mild”, the Kiwi coach said the Athlone native is likely to miss a number of games. Initially, he was ruled out of Wednesday’s meeting with the Sharks in Johannesburg, but it looks likely he’ll also sit out the clash with the Blue Bulls next week too.

After that, there are just two more games against South Africa ‘A’ and the Stormers to impress before the main event.

Gatland rates Henshaw highly and clearly sees him as a potential Test starter when the series begins in less than three weeks’ time.

Henshaw’s tour ended prematurely due to injury in 2017 and he’ll be desperate to make an impact this time around.

“He’s got a very, very mild hamstring strain,” Gatland said.

“He definitely won’t be considered for next Wednesday, then we’ll just assess his progress.

“We won’t push him if we don’t have to. It may be a couple of games, we just want to make sure he’s 100pc right because there’s no doubt he’s been one of the standout players in the Six Nations and the way he’s been playing — we’d like to get him back to full fitness without putting him under any pressure and be able to give him a couple of games before we start considering the Test side.”

Meanwhile, Gatland admitted that he’s concerned about walking into a Springbok ambush in the opening Test after an eight-try demolition at Ellis Park.

The locals are the weakest of the four South African franchises and opted to select a young side, but some of their naive defending made life too easy for the tourists.

As was the case 12 years ago, the Springboks won’t release their players for the warm-up games and Gatland recalled the big step up in quality in the opening Test in 2009 as a warning for his side.

“It’s a good point,” he said. “Memories of 2009, I won’t forget that when we didn’t come up against any of the Test players in those warm-up games.

“We probably were a little bit underdone, we’re going to have to work really hard in training to make sure we have the tempo and physicality that’s required.

“There’s no doubt that some of the games are going to be a little bit harder, hopefully, but we understand there’s a number of players out of their Super sides because they’re in with the Springbok camp.”

Gatland insists he’s yet to come close to settling on his Test side, saying he’ll continue to offer opportunities with Tom Curry, Josh Navidi and Sam Simmonds set to start against the Sharks in a new-look back-row.

To date, Gatland has picked an auxilliary second-row in the No 6 shirt with Tadhg Beirne impressing against Japan and Courtney Lawes strong against the Sigma Lions, but Curry is a different proposition and Hamish Watson’s man-of-the-match display means the coach may look at a more traditional set-up.

“We’ve been really impressed with Courtney so far, he came on at second-row last week and then back-row today,” he said.

“His foot-work and work-rate was fantastic, he does give us options for second-row and back-row.

“The pleasing thing is we’ve got so much competition.

"It will be interesting to see next week a different sort of back-row with Tom Curry, (Josh) Navidi and Sam Simmonds. That’s pretty exciting as well.

“So, the competition is huge. We’re kind of not really, at the moment, trying to predict what a Test side looks like. We’re trying to let that unfold and see how the players keep performing, playing, how the combinations work.

“Then we’ll start looking at our options. We definitely don’t want to pigeon-hole anyone.

“We’re keeping an open mind about how we play and how we keep improving.

“Look, there’s definitely no thinking about the Test team at the moment, we want everyone to have a run out in the first three games and then we might start mixing and matching a little bit.

“A few combinations, I don’t want us to start looking ahead of that because we know the competition in the squad and how tough it is in all positions.

“Back-three, midfield, loose forwards, hookers, we’ve a lot of players putting their hands up at the moment.”