Marcus Smith: 5 things you didn't know about the Lions call-up

Smith, who featured for England against Canada at Twickenham today, will fly to Cape Town on Sunday to join up with the Lions touring party.

Fly-half Russell is managing an Achilles issue and will not feature in the next three scheduled fixtures in the Castle Lager Lions Series in South Africa.

Here are five things you might not know about the fly-half.

Smith was born in Manila in the Philippines and picked up the game at the age of 7 with Centaurs RFC when his family decided to move to Singapore, he learnt the game there before moving to Sussex as a 13-year old. He has two younger brothers, Luc and Tomas.

His Dad, Jeremy Smith lived in Hong Kong from 1992-97, playing for Valley and the national side at fly-half.

The naturally gifted playmaker received a sports scholarship to attend Brighton College where he studied maths, politics and business while going on to achieve great things on the rugby pitch as he captained the school's 1st XV en route to an unbeaten campaign.

At just 18 years of age and 200 days, he made his Premiership debut at Twickenham to become the youngest fly-half to start in the top flight since a 17-year old George Ford.

Smith turned down the chance to join the Team GB training squad ahead of the Olympic Games due to be held in Japan this summer.