Back-to-back wins gives Lions good URC ‘foundation’ says coach Van Rooyen

They are not the finished product but the Lions are certainly on the up after they confidently brushed aside Scarlets 32-15 in their United Rugby Championship clash at Ellis Park on Sunday afternoon.

Ivan van Rooyen’s team were made to work hard for their win, but with three minutes to go Lions eighthman Emmanuel Tshituka rounded off a superb man-of-the-match performance by running in his second, and his side’s fourth, try to make sure that the home team came away from the match with a full house of points.

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The result sees the Lions take away nine points from their last two URC games, after they beat the Dragons last weekend, which puts them in a great position going forward.

“There was some improvement from our last game. We got five points, although we made hard work of it. Sunday lunch, nice and hot, and you could see at the end that everyone was pretty tired,” said Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen.

“But there were a lot of good things that we can take out of the game and use as a foundation to move forward.”

Dominant first half

In the match the Lions dominated the first half and took and 18-5 lead into the break thanks to tries from Rabz Maxwane and Tshituka, plus a conversion and two penalties from Jordan Hendrikse, while Scarlets responded with an unconverted score to Dan Davis.

The second half was then a tighter affair, with the Lions scoring converted tries to Jaco Kriel and Tshituka, while Scarlets scored through Tom Rogers and Vaea Fifita.

The result lifted the Lions to an impressive fifth on the URC log, at what is essentially the halfway stage of the tournament.

“We are not really analysing the log at this stage, We feel we have enough things to fix on our side. But going into the second half of the tournament sitting fifth is a lot better than last year so we will take it,” admitted Van Rooyen.

The Lions now head into the European Challenge Cup competition with them hosting the Dragons this coming Saturday, before taking on Stade Francais a week later in two important home games.