Fleck cannot explain why Stormers are struggling away
LIONS boss Swys de Bruin has vowed his team “won’t give in” after crashing to their third defeat in four matches on Sunday.
In a repeat of last year’s final, the Crusaders pipped the Lions 14-8 at Ellis Park; the second time in seven months that the eight-time champions from New Zealand have come to Joburg and won.
The defeat followed earlier setbacks last month against the Blues (home) and Jaguares (away), with a narrow win against the lowly Sunwolves sandwiched in between.
Sunday’s eight points scored by the Lions was also the first time in 40 matches, going back to round one in 2015 against the Hurricanes at Ellis Park, that they failed to score more than 10 points in a match. On that occasion the Lions lost 8-22.
In an error-ridden game on Sunday, the Lions scored an early try through wing Madosh Tambwe, but hardly threatened again, with only a late penalty by Elton Jantjies ensuring they came away with a losing bonus point.
“It was like a Test game until the end. We created one or two chances but didn’t capitalise, while they did,” said De Bruin afterwards.
“It was an arm-wrestle, but it’s not the end of the world yet. The bonus point we got could make a big difference at the end, so that’s a positive. We’re not going to make excuses, the Crusaders played very well, but the reality is we’re missing six Springboks at this stage.”
De Bruin was referring to captain Warren Whiteley, Jaco Kriel, Ruan Combrinck, Courtnall Skosan, Rohan Janse van Rensburg and Ross Cronjé who missed the match because of injury. “We need to bear in mind these guys make a big difference, even though their stand-ins have done well.
“Congratulations to the Crusaders; that’s sport,” said De Bruin.
The Lions are still second on the overall standings, but they have a big match against the Stormers coming up this weekend before they enjoy a bye and then it’s off to Australasia for four weeks.
“We need to get over this loss as quickly as possible and turn our attention to the Stormers,” said the Lions coach.
“They’re also coming off a loss (against the Bulls at Loftus), while we’ve had a few bumps in the road. We won’t give in.
“I know the character of this group.”
The Lions’ defence has been frail in recent weeks, but it was much-improved at the weekend; however, they gave up plenty in attack, creating just a handful of chances, and scoring the one try.
“De Bruin and his coaching team will be desperate to strike the right balance again this week, with plenty riding on the outcome of the
Stormers game – the Lions won’t want to go on tour on the back of another home defeat.
After spending most yesterday recovering from the Crusaders match, the Lions will be back in training today and De Bruin will hope to hear some good news about some of his injured men.
Wing Combrinck may be back this week, while scrumhalf
Cronjé and centre Janse van
Rensburg, too, may be ready for action after sitting out in recent times. There’s also a small chance
Whiteley will come through a fitness test later in the week to take up the captaincy of the team again. eir meeting with the Stormers.
On tour to Australasia, the Stormers’ touropener against the Waratahs was obviously their first chance to show their mettle to perform outside of Cape Town in 2018. And although on paper (seeing that it was only their second game after their win over the Jaguares and their first one away) that defeat might not have been enough to spread panic across the Western Cape. But the fact that it was against a Waratahs side whose performance couldn’t be described as ‘on form’ was enough to raise concerns over the Stormers’ form – their away form in particular.
After the Sydney shock, two more losses to the Crusaders and the Highlanders followed. And then this one against the Bulls.
So there’s clearly something lacking, something preventing the Stormers from being good enough away. And it’s something they better fix soon, because it’s certainly not going to get easier against the Lions and the Sharks.
And following their match at Loftus, Fleck admitted that their away form is becoming a concern.
“The next three weeks, in terms of our draw, is pretty tough. It will be our eighth game without a bye so we are scraping the barrel in terms of the load of the players,” he said.
“It’s the Lions away from home and then the Sharks away after our bye, so really important games. It is our away form at the moment that is FAR FROM DONE: Swys de Bruin coach of the Lions has plans to get his team back to winning ways. hurting us. To walk away from this game without a bonus point is pretty tough because we had numerous opportunities, but it wasn’t to be.
“We showed a good fightback. I thought it would be better in the second half but it was the same disease as in the first half, we couldn’t get any rhythm on attack and making mistakes. It’s not a game we’re going to look too deep into, we’re going to move on.
“It’s a setback because we lost to someone in our group. Home games are non-negotiables and you need to win the games against the teams in your group.
“We came here to win but it wasn’t good enough. We’ll move on quickly from this and then focus on the Lions.”
Another ‘disease’ that the Stormers seem to suffer from is not being able to perform for the full 80 and not capitalising on their chances in the attack zone.
Those two things were evident against the Jaguares, on tour and to a lesser extent against the Reds.
The Stormers need to find out why they can’t get the desired results away, and they need to do so soon.
Because if they can’t pull through against the Bulls, who also had disruptions to their team sheet, even after two confidence-boosting wins over the Blues and the Reds, things could get real ugly against the Lions.