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‘Real spicy’ finish to URC season on the cards for Lions
It is the last chance saloon for the Lions and they will have to win their last three pool games if they want to make it into the knockouts.
Lions coach Ivan Van Rooyen says it is crunch time if they want to make it into the URC playoffs come the end of the season. Picture: Sydney Seshibedi/Gallo Images
The Lions are gearing up for a spicy finish to the United Rugby Championship (URC) season as they chase a place in the competition playoffs with just three pool games left in their campaign.
The Highveld side are currently 11th on the URC log, five points off a cluster of teams in Benetton, Ulster and Connacht, who are eighth, seventh and sixth respectively, all tied on 44 points.
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It is thus the last chance saloon for the Lions and they will probably have to win their last three pool stage games, against Cardiff and Glasgow Warriors at home, before taking on the Stormers in Cape Town, if they want to make it into the knockouts.
Congested log
Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen admitted that the log was so congested that they didn’t know what they need to target to make it into the playoffs, so they will just be focusing on winning every game.
“It’s so close that we just don’t know how many points we need to qualify. What we do know is that there are three games left and we will try to win all three,” explained Van Rooyen.
“All that we can control is us. If we can do what we need to in the next two games, that Stormers game could get real spicy.”
The Lions disappointing 33-13 loss against Munster over the past weekend put a big dent in their playoff aspirations, so they will need to improve their performance if they want to have any chance of winning the next three games.
“We probably have to win all three. It’s the old cliché of sticking to our processes going forward. Why I say that is because Munster didn’t do anything that we didn’t train for, and didn’t expect. We just got our execution wrong,” said Van Rooyen.
Minimise errors
“We’ve been saying this for the past few weeks now but we have to minimise errors. So we have to recreate as many pressure situations as we can in our training sessions going forward.
“We need to keep showing the correct pictures of what to expect in defence and in attack from the opposition and then we just have to be more clinical. That’s what we will be focusing on going forward.”
Lions captain Marius Louw admitted that having a few days off this coming weekend, before facing Cardiff the following wasn’t ideal, but that the players would make the best use of the break in order to come back stronger.
“To be honest it’s not great having a weekend off after losing. You want to go hard into training, get into it and look to try and rectify what went wrong the next weekend. But it is the way it is. So we will take the rest, take it well and we will definitely come back better,” said Louw.
