British and Irish Lions assistant coach Warren Gatland says his team’s biggest challenge in South Africa will be getting the Test team to gel into a competitive unit.

The tourists will play six tour matches, starting Saturday in the north-west city of Rustenburg when they face a Royal XV, before the first of three Tests against world champions South Africa on June 20 in Durban.

Gatland said here on Tuesday the most challenging aspect for him and the rest of the coaching staff in the weeks ahead would be getting the players to bond.

“We’re basically starting from scratch,” said the New Zealand-born coach of Wales.

“We’re taking players from four teams and putting them into one team and asking them to do the business. A number of things have to be learnt, such as lineout calls. To bring everything together and forge a unit is certainly a challenge for us.”

Gatland said the laws of the game would change again from next month and this would pose interesting challenges for his players, more so for the South Africans.

The Lions have been playing under different laws in Europe to those followed by South Africans in the Super 14 competition.

From next month, the driving maul is expected to make a major return to international rugby as defending teams will again be penalised for bringing it down.

In the last few months defending teams were allowed to pull down the driving maul, forcing a number of teams to stop using the move.

“We’re definitely going to have to change a few things regarding the laws,” said Gatland.

“We’re fully aware the maul is a strength of South African rugby, but we’re also going to be able to use it. The real factor is trying to find a way of stopping the maul.”

“The way ELVs were applied took a lot of variation out of the game, but now that the maul is back, it’s a real positive. The lineout will also offer teams more variations going forward.”

Gatland, who led Wales on a two-Test tour of South Africa 12 months ago, added he and the Welsh players in the Lions squad had picked up valuable lessons from that trip.

Wales lost 2-0 to the Boks in Peter de Villiers’ first series in charge of the Springboks after taking over from 2007 World Cup winner Jake White.

“We learnt a great deal of ourselves in 2008,” said Gatland, “and they are things I will share with the squad this year.

“On that occasion we probably failed to concentrate as well as we should have on the basics of the game, things like set pieces and the breakdown, but also our concentration levels were not what they should have been.”

© AAP 2012

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