Louw still has high hopes for his Lions
• Captain’s side depends on full house from past two matches and favourable results elsewhere
Lions captain Marius Louw cheerily announced he was not ready to throw his team from the United Rugby Championship (URC) under a bus yet.
His side needs a full house of 10 points from the two remaining matches and hopes results elsewhere are favourable to qualify for the tournament’s top eight.
If they are on the URC bus, Louw knows they need to make all their stops before they can harbour thoughts of the playoffs.
“The best we can do is focus on ourselves and take it one game at a time,” said Louw about the matches against Leinster this Saturday and Zebre a week later. “The idea is to get five points and the other team no points. We can only control what we can. There will be no change in mindset, in fact we just want to grow and go even harder.”
The Lions have the benefit of playing both games on the highveld. The thin air is an ally Louw is happy to have on Saturday.
“When I was at the Sharks, I played at Ellis Park multiple times and you never get used to it. Travelling here is definitely something we look at.
“They are a very professional team that prides [itself] on [its] work rate. It is not as if they’ll ever give up.
“They haven’t been here, and we want to play that into our favour. We want to throw as many punches as we can.”
Playing at a high tempo and taking Leinster out of their comfort zone feature high on their list of priorities.
“Set piece is an area we’ve done well in the last while,” noted Louw. “Whatever we contest, we want to make it a competition. We want to win the breakdown to make sure we get quick ball. We know they thrive on quick ball and we want to make sure we slow them down. We want to stop them on defence and we want to be direct first. We want to beat them at all the aspects.”
While the Lions will be a little thin without backrowers Ruan Vermaak and Emmanuel Tshituka, Leinster, as expected, have sent a squad sans many of their internationals for the short tour that includes matches at Ellis Park and Loftus Versfeld.
“We did see that team coming,” said Lions scrum coach Julian Redelinghuys about Leinster’s touring list that excludes much of their foremost talent. “That team has been playing together for a while and they have a good set-up.”
Leinster departed Dublin with a squad of 30 that includes four uncapped players who were all part of the recent Ireland Under-20s Grand Slamwinning squad.
Though Ireland Test stars No 8 Caelan Doris and centre Garry Ringrose both came through last weekend’s clash against Leicester Tigers unscathed after their return from the graduated return to play protocols, they have not been included in the group.
Ryan Baird injured his shoulder in the first half against Leicester Tigers and will be unavailable for a few weeks, while wing James Lowe is also out with an injured calf.
Leinster’s lengthy list of injured players includes Josh van der Flier (ankle), Johnny Sexton (groin), Jamie Osborne (knee), Rónan Kelleher (shoulder), Joe McCarthy (ankle), Cormac Foley (hamstring), Martin Moloney (knee) and Charlie Ngatai (hamstring).