At least the brand is bearing up. Which is more than can be said for the bodies of the Lions players and the credibility of the South African coach.

There were at least 25,000 travelling fans at Saturday's Second Test between South Africa and the British and Irish Lions in Pretoria, and nearly as many the week before.

South African hoteliers and tour operators, taxi drivers have been rubbing their hands with glee; despite the credit crunch, the Lions supporters have continued to arrive in huge numbers, splash their cash and flash their credit cards with wild abandon.

The last Lions tour to New Zealand in 2005 was thought to have benefited the local economy to the tune of £100m. This one won't be quite as lucrative, but no one's complaining. Certainly not the out-and-out rugby fans.

As Lions coach Ian McGeechan pointed out, those who attended the first two Tests have witnessed two wonderfully compelling games of rugby.

That they both ended in narrow defeat for the tourists, that those results meant that the series was lost and that the Lions have now lost seven matches on the trot – with every likelihood of reaching eight on Saturday – are ominous only if you believe that supporters will continue to turn up only if they think their team has a chance of winning.

Which is why, in the build-up to their coverage of the tour, Sky flooded the airwaves with documentaries about the Lions' extraordinary success in South Africa – by the 1974 "Invincibles" and by Martin Johnson's 1997 squad.

Why they got Jim Telfer, the craggy Scot who was forwards coach on that tour, to recreate his "Everest" speech and why tour sponsors HSBC wheeled out legendary Lions Gareth Edwards, Jason Robinson and Jason Leonard at every opportunity.

And the players, brilliantly guided by McGeechan and another Lions great Gerald Davies, played their part, were great role models and ambassadors for the sport and the concept, and, despite having the barest minimum of time to gel as a team, twice came within a whisker of beating the world champions.

How crass, then, was the reaction of Springbok coach Pieter de Villiers to journalists asking him to condemn one of his star players, Schalk Burger, for eye-gouging? This wasn't a case of mistaken identity – the player had been named by referee's assistant Bryce Lawrence and sent to the sin-bin by referee Christophe Berdos.

Nor was it one of those incidents which look worse than they actually are, when the perpetrator can sometimes be more guilty of clumsiness than malice – there were no extenuating circumstances to excuse the proximity of Burger's fingers to Lions wing Luke Fitzgerald's eye-socket.

Yet de Villiers, to the incredulity of the press corps, at first tried to insist that it was all "part of the game".

He may have since distanced himself from that remark, but not by much.

While accepting the evidence of both the cameras and the citing commissioner, who suspended Burger for eight weeks, de Villiers appeared to accept his player's plea that, while scratching away at Fitzgerald's face, he never really intended any damage.

Then, in a further attempt to deflect criticism, de Villiers tried to suggest that rugby was a man's game and that attempts to eradicate dirty play would end with the sport resembling ballet.

He also tried to claim that journalists had become obsessed with dirty play when they should be concentrating on the achievements of his team in beating the Lions, and he claimed also that the Lions themselves had been slow to offer their congratulations.

Maybe, he wondered, they will acknowledge us after the Third Test.

Maybe they will, Pieter, maybe they will, but for the moment they've got other things on their mind.

The first is to somehow gather together enough bodies to live up to the proud tradition of the Lions.

The Second Test took a brutal toll, both physically and mentally. The Lions' victory hopes were derailed in the space of a few second half minutes when both props, Gethin Jenkins and Adam Jones, and both centres, Brian O'Driscoll and Jamie Roberts, had to leave the field injured.

Battered, bruised and deflated, the Lions will have to dig deep on Saturday. Even if they are thrashed – and that is the fear – they are likely to stay true to both the letter of the law and the spirit of the game. Let's hope the same can be said of Pieter de Villiers.