IRELAND captain Rory Best has urged his team to stay calm and clinch an historic Test series victory at Ellis Park on Saturday.
The Ulster hooker led his team through their final preparations at the Johannesburg venue ahead of the bid to follow the All Blacks and the Lions into the record books as the only teams to win three-match series in South Africa.
Ireland beat the Springboks in the first Test in Cape Town last week, overcoming the first-half red card shown to CJ Stander to clinch a 26-20 win.
It was their first away win over the World Cup semi-finalists, but they have parked that piece of history and are going after more this weekend.
"Motivation-wise, it's never an issue for us," Best said.
"If you talk to any international player, pulling on a Test jersey is special. We know, the same as last week, there's an opportunity to create history here.
"We took a step forward last week in terms of being the first team to (win here). Now, we have an opportunity to win a Test series which is unbelievably difficult to do.
"That's probably the big driver this week is that it's going to take a phenomenal performance to win here.
"There's a reason why so few teams come here and win a Test series and that's because it's hard to do.
"So for us it's about making sure that we get ourselves right, we do the same homework if not more homework than we did last week on the Springboks and we make sure that we're in a position (to win).
"We know the Springboks aren't going to hand history to us, we have to take it ourselves. That's going to be the tough challenge and I suppose that's the challenge that you're up for."
The second, and potentially decisive, Test takes place on Saturday, 4pm at Ellis Park in Johannesburg live on Sky Sports 1.
