‘We have grown a lot’: Lions pleased to end year on a high note

The Lions ended their year on a high with a fourth straight win, and second in a row in the Challenge Cup, when they beat English Premiership club Newcastle Falcons 35-13 at Ellis Park on Saturday.

It was a fantastic way to finish their rugby for the year after they had a difficult start to the season that saw them with one win of their opening five games in the United Rugby Championship (URC), which included a tough four-game European tour.

Since then, however, the Lions have thumped Zebre 61-21 and Dragons 49-24 in the URC at home, and then enjoyed a great start to their Challenge Cup campaign with a 28-12 win over USA Perpignan followed by last week’s win over the Falcons.

Although they went into the game at the weekend in top form and were favourites, the Lions were pushed hard by their English visitors and had to dig deep through their forwards to secure the positive bonus-point result in the end.

“We did say we wanted to come out here with a fast start and get them breathing a bit. So it was a slow start from us but we managed to get it together and come away with the result at the end,” said man-of-the-match Darrien Landsberg.

“I think [the wet and cool conditions] helped them a bit. We were expecting it to be hotter than it was but we managed to pull it together and get the result that we wanted.

“We did say in the week that we wanted to take them up front first and the rest would handle itself, so I think we did a great job. Credit to the whole pack in the lineouts and in the scrums. I think we did a phenomenal job today.”

Time off

The Lions now have a couple of weeks off before resuming their URC campaign against the Sharks in Durban over the first weekend of January, following which they will take on Montpellier in France and host Ospreys in the next two rounds of the Challenge Cup.

Captain Marius Louw has been happy with the growth of the team over the season so far and believes that they can continue getting better over the rest of the campaign when they resume playing in January.

“We are a team that is process driven, so we focus on what we need to do every week, and that will require a lot of different things from us,” Louw said.

“I think we have grown a lot (this season) and our time of learning has been fast. It is just about executing our plan and that’s where it was a little bit disappointing for me (against the Falcons).

“But looking forward it will obviously be a good thing for us to keep on winning. That’s the main objective for us, and hopefully we can get a home quarterfinal (in the Challenge Cup). That would be awesome for us.”