Lions to bring different style in home conditions against Ulster

The Lions will be looking to bring a different style of play to the one they used on their successful three match UK tour when they host Ulster in their United Rugby Championship (URC) match at Ellis Park on Saturday afternoon (kick-off 2pm).

A key aspect of all the Lions’ wins in Wales and Scotland was their superb defence, as they kept out the opposition for large parts of the game, while taking the few chances that came their way, with defence coach Jaque Fourie explaining that was due to the atrocious conditions they played in.

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“The conditions we played in in Cardiff and Edinburgh were very difficult. You could hardly kick the ball, so we knew that defence was going to win us the game and we knew that in some stages we were going to have to defend for 10 to 15 minutes in our own half,” explained Fourie.

“So we knew that we were going to have to put in the hard yards defensively and that was going to be the difference in the end, which it proved to be.

“Now back in conditions we are used to in Joburg I think we will bring a bit of a different style to the game. The ball is going to be dry, so we will run it a lot more and the ball travels further when you kick it,” he added.

“So we are definitely going to change it up a bit and hopefully we can get ahead from the start and build on that performance.”

Key players

The Lions have welcomed two key players back into the mix for the match, with wing Edwill van der Merwe back, having observed his return to play protocol after suffering concussion against Cardiff, and utility forward Willem Alberts back after a long injury layoff.

“Edwill is fresh and ready and raring to go. He is a vital part of our attack and defence, so we are happy to have him back,” said Fourie.

“It is great to have Willem back. He has been out of the game for quite a while now. So it’s always good to have that experience in your team, especially with the young guys around you to calm them down and we are looking forward to seeing how he goes on the weekend.”

The Lions will also be chasing their first home win of the season after they were beaten by the Bulls at Ellis Park in their opening game, before going overseas and beating Ospreys, Cardiff and Edinburgh on the bounce.

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Despite their superb defence playing a massive hand in them winning all three games, they did miss a large number of tackles during the tour, particularly against Edinburgh with them missing more than 30, and they will need to fix that ahead of the Ulster game.

“We had a good tour. The guys really came together the last two games and we had two good performances. In terms of the missed tackles it was just a few players who missed most of those tackles. So that’s individual errors you need to fix and not system errors,” said Fourie.

“But the nice thing is the guys are working for each other. So when someone misses a tackle someone else fixes it. So that for me is the character of the team and shows that the guys are playing for each other.”