The Lions are aiming to win all of their home matches at Ellis Park this season, but that will be tested to the max on Saturday against Ulster.
Lions assistant coach Jaque Fourie said that they still firmly believe that a top eight finish in the United Rugby Championship (URC) is possible and key to that will be winning all of their home matches this season.
However, that will be far easier said than done, and the Lions will face an extremely tough test of those credentials against an in-form Ulster team at Ellis Park on Saturday afternoon, fresh off a win against a Springbok-laden Sharks in Durban.
Ulster have won all three of the matches so far this season (with one postponed), and are heading to the Highveld with plenty of confidence, so the Lions will have to be much better than they were in their bonus point home win over Scarlets.
Top eight hunt
The Ulster match is essentially a must-win if they want to stay in the top eight hunt, to secure a first appearance in the competition quarterfinals at the end of the season, even though this is only their fifth match of the campaign, after they started off with three straight losses on tour.
“The goal still stays the same. We are only four games into the season. Touring is always tough, last season I think we only won one or two games on tour,” explained Fourie.
“Our main focus this season is to win all of our games at home, and one or two derby games away. So our goal still stays the same. For us as a union we still want to be a top eight team and we still see ourselves making it there.
“It’s not going to happen overnight, and it is hard work. It’s our fifth season now in the URC. So for us realistically, to not put any extra pressure on ourselves, we have to make top eight, and that is very important for us as a union.”
The Lions have yet to hit their straps this season, and even returning home didn’t help as much, as they had to battle hard for their 29-18 win over bottom of the table Scarlets.
Grind it out
Usually on the Highveld the Lions are an exciting, expansive team that scores tons of tries, but that wasn’t the case against Scarlets and they had to in the end grind the result out, which Fourie explained was important as they had been playing into the hands of opposing teams.
“Being able to grind it out is very important. We as the Lions want to play an expansive game of rugby. But in doing that we play into some team’s hands. So sometimes the big guys up front are going to have to roll up their sleeves and go through them, instead of us going around them,” said Fourie.
“Some teams are good at taking you to the edge, and from the edge they can fire off the line and put pressure on your attack. So for us we are following the old saying of: ‘You have to earn the respect to go wide again.’ That’s the way of the Lions.
“If teams are rushing on us we can’t just keep playing back and going to the edge, because that’s what they want. So we have to go through them first to earn the right to go around them.
“Because if you aren’t going to go through them, on the second and third phase they are going to rush off the line and put pressure on you.”
