Lions ready for wind and rain on tough URC tour

The Lions are preparing for a tough first tour of the season in the United Rugby Championship (URC) with them leaving on Tuesday for a month-long trip that will see them play in Scotland, Italy, Wales and Ireland.

The Johannesburg side opened their URC campaign with a fighting, but ultimately disappointing, 35-33 loss against the Stormers at Ellis Park over the weekend.

ALSO READ: Bulls and Stormers make perfect start to new URC season

Although they head off on tour off a loss, Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen said that he was happy that the team was touring early and that they were looking forward to learning and growing in difficult conditions.

“Tuesday we are jumping on a plane for a month. It’s nice for us to tour early. It’s an opportunity for us to get even closer together as a group,” said Van Rooyen.

“We will be experiencing a bit of different weather with some wind and rain. But it will be a good experience for us and we will be able to grow and adapt to conditions while learning to work around it.”

In their first game of the season the Lions squandered a great chance to get off to the perfect start and pick up a win over a Stormers team missing all of their Bok players.

Great start

The Lions made a good start in the match with their set-piece dominating, but they fell away spectacularly as the Stormers flew into a 27-7 halftime lead and extended that to 32-7 just two minutes into the second half.

However, the Lions then fought back spectacularly over the final 35 minutes, but it was too little too late in the end.

“It was definitely a game of two halves. I think that 15 minutes before halftime after a decent start we gave them two balls in our own half and they scored two tries. After the 80 minutes that was probably the difference,” admitted Van Rooyen.

“We were a lot more clinical with the ball in hand in the last 30 minutes (of the match). So we have a lot of stuff to fix but also a lot of stuff to get excited about.

“The attitude of the guys to keep fighting and walk away with two points was great. It’s never ideal (to lose) but those were the moments last season where we didn’t walk away with any points. Obviously we thought we could walk away with three more at home and make it five.”

Lions next four URC fixtures:

v Edinburgh in Scotland

v Bentton in Italy

v Scarlets in Wales

v Ulster in Ireland