Rugby: England star Courtney Lawes jokes All Black Brodie Retallick should sleep in same hotel bed that exacerbated his back injury

Brodie Retallick. Photo / Getty

British and Irish Lions lock Courtney Lawes has joked that he hopes that talisman All Black Brodie Retallick has been sleeping in the bed that exacerbated his own back injury.

Lawes missed the 12-11 victory over South Africa with a problem that initially surfaced early last month and grew more severe when having to squeeze his 6ft 7in frame into a single bed at a local hotel the night before Northampton's defeat to Leicester at Twickenham.

The All Blacks are staying at the same accommodation ahead of Saturday's Test against England, which sees Lawes named on the bench having been restored to full fitness.

Courtney Lawes looks on after missing the England training session. Photo / Getty

Lawes joked it "would be good" if the influential Retallick had been allocated the same bed this week.

"I hurt my back - I tore a disc - the week before the Leicester game and it was kind of settling down but I was touch and go," Lawes said.

"Then I slept in a not great bed and that just wrote it off. It didn't actually make my back any worse, it just didn't allow me to improve enough to play that game.

"It was just a normal, single bed. It wasn't a bad bed it was just the change in beds when you've got a bad back."

Retallick famously failed to correctly name a single England player when asked during the summer tour to New Zealand in 2014.

The closest he came was Michael Laws, who at the time was mayor of Whanganui, presumably in reference to Courtney Lawes.