Lions chasing that 80 minute performance against Connacht

The Lions are looking to put together an 80 minute performance when they take on Connacht at the Sportsground in their United Rugby Championship (URC) match-up on Saturday night.

This season the Lions have built a worrying trend of putting in strong first half performances, before falling away dramatically in the second half.

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This has become more evident as the season has progressed with their last five games, which included losses against the Sharks, Stormers, Munster and Stade Francais, as well as a tight win over the Dragons this past weekend, all seeing heavy second half dips.

Defence coach Jacques Fourie believes the team has what it takes to put it all together this weekend and walk away with a win.

“I think it has been our problem the whole season that we come out the first half and play well and then we slack off in the second half. We need to come out and put two halves together and hopefully this week we will do it,” said Fourie.

“We go into a spiral where we do a lot of negative stuff, so we need to go back to the positives. We have our sequence where we get to the positives. We need to break that cycle, and when we spiral we need to find a way back to the positives again.

“We want to come out on Saturday firing and put two halves together and hopefully beat them.”

Added pressure

Adding to the pressure on the visitors is that no South African team has managed to pick up a win at the Sportsground in the competition to date, so they will be looking to make a bit of history if they do manage to upset the hosts.

“I think the Springboks played here, and I was part of that team that played here in Connacht. We played to an 18-all draw,” said Fourie.

“We know the conditions are different over here, looking outside, it is grey and raining the whole time. Hopefully we can make history and become the first team to beat Connacht here.

“But it won’t be easy. It will take a 23-man effort that we need to put in. We went through their stuff and we know they are a tough side. If you stay in Galway and you see how it looks here, you need to be tough.”