Jonathan Davies has told Brian O'Driscoll that he was only spurred on by the negative reaction from Ireland to him being selected to replace the Leinster great for the Lions' third Test in 2013.
There was dismay when O'Driscoll, on his final Lions tour, was dropped by Warren Gatland for the win or bust clash with Australia in Sydney.
And then 25-year-old Welsh centre Davies found himself at the heart of an angry reaction from Irish supporters that week as the man who took the legend's place.
Speaking with Davies for the new series ‘Lions Call’ with Brian O’Driscoll on the BT Sport YouTube channel, the Dubliner said there was "maybe a little bit of a mini-circus around it".
Davies recalled his selection and what occurred in the immediate aftermath.
"I thought it would go pretty wild, the reaction back home," he said.
"I expected it and probably geared myself up for it.
"Like, I didn't expect to be selected and that was initially the shock. And I remember getting on the bus (after team selection) and thinking, 'Right, you've got to knuckle down this week, even more so'.
"And to be fair to you, you walked past me on the bus and shaked my hand and congratulated me, and after that then it was probably more the social media stuff, the little circus, and you're getting tweeted stuff and you're just like, 'Wow'."
Jamie Heaslip was also among six players dropped for that final Test and Gatland could later claim with justification that he made the right call, with the Lions claiming victory in a 41-16 rout.
O'Driscoll told Davies: "I had a lot of support from Ireland.
"But your own country backs one of their own, so it must have been overwhelming support from Wales - just a couple of dodgy tweets coming in from Ireland!".
And Davies replied: "Yeah, locations from Dublin on all the tweets!
"I took it with a bit of salt. I remember talking to my brother on FaceTime and he was laughing at it, he was reading my tweets back to me and I was like, 'I've already read them, I don't need this'.
"I probably used it as a motivating factor, like, 'I'll prove you wrong, I'm going to do as best as I can to make sure we win the series'.
"I think that's what focused me because Gats asked me on the Friday, he goes, 'How's it been?'.
"I was like, 'Well, yeah, OK' and he said, 'Yeah, I know exactly!'
"And he said, 'Just make sure we win and we'll be OK', and I was like, 'Yeah, OK'."
*With one year until the British & Irish Lions tour South Africa in 2021, watch BT Sport's new series ‘Lions Call’ with Brian O’Driscoll on the BT Sport YouTube channel ( youtube.com/btsport ).
