Lions leave ’Tahs bloodied and lost
LIONS maul and they do so with menace, the Waratahs found out here yesterday.
Fortunately no tourists were actually harmed in the production of the Lions’ second victory of their Super Rugby campaign, after they edged the Cheetahs in the opening round last weekend.
As heartening as last weekend’s victory was for the levels of resilience and adaptability the Lions displayed, this win added credence to the suspicion that last year’s finalists are far from one-trick ponies.
They roamed the wide open spaces with a spring in their step en route to last year’s final but yesterday they only lengthened their stride once the Waratahs were thoroughly beaten in the possession stakes.
The Lions’ maul in particular was a tool that was deployed with telling effect in the first half. Twice the human caterpillar crawled slowly but inexorably towards the ’Tahs goalline in the opening 20 minutes with Warren Whiteley and Ruan Ackermann providing the telling sting. As if the message wasn’t received, they tellingly did so again with two minutes to go when Malcolm Marx crashed over to bring up the Lions’ 50.
Scrum dominance further helped peg the Waratahs on their heels.
Lions props Ruan Dreyer and Jacques van Rooyen are much underrated, while it helps to have Robbie Coetzee and Marx as men who can rotate in the middle. Jaco Kriel made inroads in the wider channels.
Behind the marauding pack, Ross Cronje was incisive, allowing Elton Jantjies to deliver a virtuoso first-half performance, while fullback Andries Coetzee occasionally slipped into the role of neat distributor.
The best back of the day, however, was Rohan Janse van Rensburg, who lost his mother this week. With so much ball to play with, the Lions were at times quite electrifying.
Their backs and forwards combined and they at times ran the Aussies ragged.
It was, however, far from a complete performance.
The Lions somehow could not apply the same single-minded focus to their endeavour when they were in their own half.
They were poor receivers of kickins and their exit strategies were largely up blind alleys. It meant, despite the Lions holding a distinct advantage in the territory and possession stakes, they let the visitors in almost every time they had made advances on the scoreboard.
The visitors gleefully accepted the crumbs but once they compiled them into one heap, they found themselves only nine points adrift.
That pattern developed as early on as the sixth minute and continued throughout the first half.
Bryce Hegarty scored a converted try three minutes before the break which meant the visitors, despite conceding five first-half tries without making much of the play, still had a foothold at the break. For the Lions there clearly are a few nuts that need tightening.