The Lions produced a dismal performance to be hammered by the Bulls in the Jukskei derby at Ellis Park.
Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen has admitted that it was an incredibly sloppy performance from his team that led to their dismal 52-17 United Rugby Championship (URC) Jukskei derby loss to fierce rivals, the Bulls, at Ellis Park over the weekend.
The Lions were chasing a first URC double over their Highveld rivals, after winning the first encounter between them 43-33 at Loftus in November, but instead produced an insipid display as they were steamrolled by the Pretoria-based side.
Both teams had returned to South Africa last weekend after a two game tour to Europe, where the Lions picked up two draws, against Perpignan in France and Ospreys in Wales, while the Bulls won their two matches against Pau in France and Edinburgh in Scotland.
Good build up
But Van Rooyen refused to blame the result on the travel factor, explaining that they had actually enjoyed a good build-up, but just didn’t pitch up on the day.
“We were sloppy. Especially in that first half, I don’t think we managed to get the ball through two phases, maybe not even three. If you’re just sloppy, then you can’t build continuity,” said Van Rooyen.
“You make an error, they get the ball, then you concede momentum. So the big frustration was errors and momentum. When you allow big guys like them momentum, then they run at you.”
“I think our energy in training (during the week) was actually really good. Speaking to the Bulls they felt the opposite. So they felt flatter than we did going into today. There weren’t any signs (of this type of performance) in terms of our build-up week.
“We were happy with the prep, with the pictures (in training), and with how we wanted to play. Just on the day, the execution was not accurate enough.”
URC break
The URC now takes a break for a few weeks with the Six Nations kicking off this week, before the SA teams get back into action with a few more local derbies.
Lions captain Francke Horn was extremely frustrated and disappointed with the performance from his team, and said that they would be taking a week break, before returning and trying to fix what they did wrong ahead of home clashes against the Sharks and Stormers.
“All of the guys in the changing room are proud men and we’ll take this loss at home quite hard. We have a week off now to really switch off and then when we come back, have a look at what we did not do (well) and how we can rectify that,” explained Horn.
