British and Irish Lions warm up for first New Zealand clash by thrashing Chiefs in Hamilton

The British and Irish Lions' midweek lineup enhanced their respective claims for a Test berth after crushing Super Rugby outfit the Chiefs.

Jack Nowell notched a brace and the likes of Liam Williams, Elliot Daly, Courtney Lawes and Dan Biggar also impressed as a team consisting of players unlikely to play in Saturday's (24 June) opening clash against the All Blacks in Auckland but who still harbour hopes of featuring in the second and third Tests ran out emphatic 34-6 winners at Hamilton's FMG Stadium.

After three early penalties from Biggar and Stephen Donald, the Lions crossed the whitewash for the first time when, after lovely build-up play involving a superb pass from Williams, England wing Nowell scooped the ball up from the breakdown and dived over from close range.

Another bout of ill-discipline led to Donald moving the Chiefs back to within seven points at the interval.

Applying more pressure straight after half-time, the tourists were awarded a penalty try and Mitchell Brown was dispatched to the sin bin for collapsing a maul.

Iain Henderson capitalised on his side's numerical advantage by beautifully teeing up Nowell for his second try of the evening - perhaps the finest of the six-match tour to date - and Williams sliced through the Chiefs' defence with an excellent break before feeding Jared Payne for a simple score.

Only a botched pass from Tommy Seymour prevented the Irish centre from stretching the lead even further as the Chiefs, missing both their New Zealand internationals and most of their Maori All Blacks, struggled to come from deep and limit the damage despite one burst of eye-catching handling.

"I hope we are peaking at the right time," head coach Warren Gatland told Sky Sports after the match. "We always felt that we would get better the longer we spent together. We were more clinical today, we squeezed them, didn't concede any tries and played some good rugby, finished off a few chances."

After all of the furore surrounding last week's controversial decision to call-up six Wales and Scotland players to the squad, Kristian Dacey, Allan Dell, Tomas Francis, Cory Hill, Gareth Davies and Finn Russell all remained unused replacements.

"The guys on the bench, all along we said they were in for cover," Gatland added, per the BBC. "We wanted the guys [in the starting XV] to play 80 minutes."