South Africa to see leaner-looking Lions

"The numbers will definitely be reduced for 2009, and for rugby reasons," said Feehan, who brokered the headline £3.5?million sponsorship deal with HSBC. "Commercially we have no problems but it's felt that we should return to more traditional values. It's easy to say we took too many last time but there was a logic there. As for the coach, we wouldn't want to paint ourselves into boxes but home-grown would be a definite plus. The incoming coach will have his own views so we wouldn't want to set a precise ceiling on numbers at the moment."