Lions holding thumbs Bok winger will be back to face Edinburgh

The Lions are hopeful their Springbok wing Edwill van der Merwe will get the all-clear ahead of this weekend’s United Rugby Championship match against Edinburgh at Ellis Park on Saturday.

The prolific try-scorer, who also scored a five-pointer on his debut for the Springboks against Wales in June, has been sidelined since that match, but Lions management are hoping he, as well as Richard Kriel, will be available for this weekend’s match.

The Lions go into the game against the Scottish side on the back of a good first-up win against Ulster at home last weekend, while Edinburgh came up just short against the Bulls at Loftus.

A fit Van der Merwe will strengthen an already powerful-looking Lions side that also features recent Bok players Morne van den Berg, Quan Horn and Ruan Venter.

Assistant coach Ricardo Loubscher though said there was some concern around Venter this week.

Player concerns

“Richard Kriel and Edwill van der Merwe have been training with us since last week and they are up for selection,” confirmed Loubscher.

“They’re available, but we’ll only finalise the team later in the week.

“There are, however, other concerns this week, with question marks about the fitness of Morne Brandon, Morgan Naude, Ruan Venter and Tapiwa Mafura. We’re waiting for the doctors to give us more feedback.”

Turning his attention to the match, Loubscher said it would be important for the Lions to keep as much ball away from Edinburgh’s dangerous back division which includes Scotland star and former Tuks man, Duhan van der Merwe.

“Edinburgh’s back three like it when it becomes unstructured so one doesn’t want to give them too much time and space,” said Loubscher.

“We must take that away from them. But, we can’t only focus on the back three, we need to be on point in defence across the game, make sure we reset quickly, because they’re dangerous in broken play.”

He added the Lions would now look to step it up this weekend having got their first game of the new season out of the way.

“We’re happy with the win against Ulster, but we certainly need to brush up a bit. Our execution wasn’t great at times so we’ll look to be more clinical. We only had two days to prepare last week (because of players resting after the Currie Cup final).

“This weekend we have another opportunity to improve and to build some momentum. We scored some nice tries last week, so I’m happy with the attack, but we just need to finish better, and be more clinical.”