DAN Lydiate is left needing a “miracle” to make the tour to New Zealand after being forced off in the opening exchanges of Wales’ heavy defeat to England at Twickenham.

The blindside flanker, who was captaining the side from openside in the absence of injured skipper Sam Warburton, came off after just 23 minutes of the 27-13 defeat in London.

The Lions ace won’t be on the Monday flight to New Zealand and head coach Warren Gatland expects to name a replacement in his squad for the three Tests against the All Blacks and midweek fixture with the Chiefs.

“Dan is struggling with a hamstring and potentially an AC (shoulder) injury,” said the boss, who may turn to Ellis Jenkins or Josh Navidi of Cardiff Blues.

“We haven’t said anything to Dan because he has got to process that the tour could already be over for him and that’s incredibly disappointing.

“It’s unlikely he is going to be on the plane and has to go back to the hotel and ice (the injuries) to see if potentially there is a miracle in the next 12 hours but the assessment from our physios doesn’t look positive.”

Warburton is expected to be back for the first Test in Auckland a week on Saturday with Ross Moriarty potentially joining the captain and Taulupe Faletau in the back row after showing glimpses of his talent at Twickenham.

“I thought he carried well and gave us some nice go-forward,” said Gatland. “He had a pretty strong game and his performance was pretty good, so he has put himself in contention for that first Test.”

Wales shipped five tries on a miserable afternoon that would have been worse were it not for the erratic kicking of England fly-half George Ford, who missed 14 points from the tee.

A rapid start was rewarded with a try by loosehead Rob Evans but Wales were awful after turning around 13-10 to the good.

Gatland said: “I was happy with the first half, disappointed with the second half. We definitely needed a run because players haven’t played at that level for a while and were blowing a bit.

“To get that game under our belt was pretty good. I was disappointed with aspects of the second half but they are not things we can’t fix."

He continued: "What's going to be important in New Zealand is keeping that (high) tempo for 80 minutes. We've got a lot of players who haven't played at that level for a while.

"None of our teams were involved in the knockout stages of Europe (Champions Cup), England had five and some of their players were in semi-finals last week.

"We were happy with the way that we started and lots of things in the first half but struggled with it for 80 minutes. The whole reason for this game was to get that under our belts to hit the ground running in New Zealand."