Lions are getting there, says skipper Jantjies

Lions captain Elton Jantjies is not exactly sackcloth and ashes despite his team suffering their second consecutive Super Rugby Unlocked defeat to the Stormers at Newlands on Saturday evening.

The Lions playmaker took comfort from their level of energy and tenacity, particularly in the first half, but an error-strewn second period allowed the Stormers back into the game, to record a come-from-behind 23-17 victory.

“There were some things to take encouragement from in that first 40 and I can’t really blame the guys. I sensed the collective energy on the park, after all we did score two tries and had one (from Burger Odendaal) disallowed,” said Jantjies.

But Jantjies was quick to add: “We will, nevertheless, analyse the game and see where we can get better.”

While flank Jaco Kriel was a perpetual thorn in the Stormers side and popped up everywhere for the visitors, coach Cash van Rooyen also had rich praise for centre Odendaal, at times admittedly still an unfamiliar sight in a red jersey, after being discarded by near neighbours, the Bulls.

“Burger really put his body on the line and deserved to pick up the Man-of-the-Match award,” said he said.

“The first 40 minutes were very good and we managed to put them under a lot of pressure,” said Van Rooyen.

With a much-improved launch pad from set-pieces, the coach believed the lingering weakness was still their inability to convert a plethora of opportunities into points after they had the home team under pressure for long periods in both halves.

“We knew they would come out fighting in the first 20 minutes after halftime and one or two key moments that went against us made a telling difference in the game,” said the coach.

Despite being pegged back in their own half once their opponents started creating more chances and seeing more quality ball, Van Rooyen still believed they could have won their opening two matches (they lost their first match 19-16 to the Sharks).

“This one is not a sprint, it’s a marathon; we played two away games on the trot, and now we have four at home.

“We gave ourselves a winning chance in both games, but the fact we didn’t close out the games and win them is something we still have to address. Now we have a chance to fix it at home.”

Stormers captain Siya Kolisi believed his side were so poor in the first half, that the Lions were much better value than their slender 10-6 lead at the break.

“The errors we made in that first half were silly and if the Lions had converted more of their chances, they could easily have gone into the break leading by a much wider margin,” said the Springbok captain.

Kolisi admitted there were “a lot’ of errors in the first half”, and was not an ideal way for the Capetonians to start their campaign after having a bye in the first week.

“We realised we could not depend on what happened in the previous game against the Lions (a 34-21 victory on SuperFan Saturday at Loftus Versveld),” he said.

“The Lions came out firing and we made tons of individual mistakes, but we said at halftime that we needed to take ownership and we just got progressively better in the second half,” added Kolisi.

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