Lions finally roar leading into playoffs

One good win does not make a season, but Wellington Lions captain Brad Shields hopes the best is yet to come from his side.

The Lions hammered Southland 60-21 at Westpac Stadium on Friday, as their attack finally gelled to run in nine tries.

Some of those efforts were worthy of the highlight reel, starting from deep within their own half as Southland’s defence proved unable to contain Super Rugby players Matt Proctor, Vaea Fifita and Jason Woodard.

The performance was vastly superior to the laboured efforts against Bay of Plenty and Northland in recent weeks, but Shields wasn’t getting too carried away.

‘‘That was the goal during the week, to put a performance out there, we’ve been 10 or 20 per cent off each game and I think we’re still a little bit off, but the majority of the game we were into it.

‘‘The best thing we do is when we get a turnover we attack and that’s the strength of Wellington and we did that really well.

‘‘Our focus to switch and get into attack from defence is bloody good, to get the ball wide and use our speedsters, but the same needs to be on defence because there were a couple of soft tries off set pieces.’’

Those tries came in the first half from first-man plays off a lineout and scrum respectively which had the score at 17-14.

Wellington ran away with the game from there.

Wellington will claim top spot in the Championship division, and home ground advantage for the playoffs, if they win their last three games.

They sit one point behind leaders Otago with a game in hand courtesy of the latter’s 54-17 loss to Auckland on Saturday.