‘Players must take accountability,’ says Lions captain Horn after Bulls bashing

Lions captain Francke Horn was in a fighting mood after his team’s disastrous Jukskei derby loss against the Bulls, saying that he has no doubt that they will bounce back from their dreadful showing.

The Bulls produced arguably their best performance of a difficult season to thrash their Highveld rivals 52-17 on their home turf, Ellis Park, on Saturday to catapult them above the Lions and into the United Rugby Championship (URC) top eight.

It was a dismal effort from the Lions, who were chasing a first ever URC double over the Pretoria side, after they triumphed in the first Jukskei derby in November, but were unfortunately never in the game as the Bulls dominated from start to finish.

The Lions now have the next two weekends off, before two huge home derbies against the Sharks and Stormers on consecutive weekends, and having been dumped out of the Challenge Cup, their full focus is now on finishing in the URC top eight and making the playoffs for the first time.

“All of our eggs are now in one basket, which is the URC, and we are really going to focus on that. But I have no doubt that the guys will come back from this and move forward,” said Horn after the Bulls loss.

“That was a tough result (to take). But no one prepares in the week to produce that (type of) performance. It comes down to (the players) individual responsibility to do their job really well, and what the team needs of you in the moment. There wasn’t enough of that.”

Time off

The Lions now have some time off this week, for them to relax and switch off after a very busy December and January period, before returning to training next week and going all out over the following two weeks to fix the things that they did wrong.

“Every player needs to take accountability for their job. I think we lost five or six line-outs, and we probably didn’t get more than one or two phases, especially in the second half,” explained Horn.

“You saw the last try we scored by Bronson (Mills), we kept the ball for five phases and we scored easily. That’s a big frustration (that they couldn’t do that regularly).

“Players need to take accountability for what we did out there. It’s a team sport, but an individual must also do his part.”