Swys laughs off ‘media blackout’

Speaking to Lions coach Swys de Bruin a few days ago he was quite taken aback by the so-called “media blackout” this week. For those who didn’t follow proceedings – some social outlets questioned the “Lions media blackout” after the team cancelled their usual Thursday press conference, opting instead to send the team out electronically.

“Why? Ahead of such a big game against the Bulls? It’s not on,” some outlets let go.

Soon afterwards, the Lions released a statement saying there was no such thing as a media blackout as De Bruin was available for media interviews if approached through the proper protocol channels.

De Bruin himself was left quite astonished by these developments.

“What media blackout? I must say I was honestly quite surprised by this, but let’s come to the real story,” he said.

“As normal, I walked into the Lions offices on Monday morning and said because the Bulls game is an away game – the first of the season – I said there would be no conference and the response was ‘yes, okay coach’.

“But I was quite surprised by the outcry later. Listen, I always release the team on a Tuesday and the union decide when the official team announcement and conference will take place,” he said.

But now it has emerged that the conference to announce the new Bok coach would have taken place yesterday at 1pm just an half-an-hour later than the Lions usual conference would have taken place.

So the idea was created that maybe the Lions conference this week was cancelled because the powers that be already knew it would have created a clash with the Bok conference.

Instead, the Lions decided to send their team announcement out late on Tuesday afternoon with a link to Facebook to pick up quotes from De Bruin about team changes.

It was definitely a first for the Lions being two days prior to what they said the official team would be syndicated electronically on the Thursday.

It caused such a media frenzy that some of our scribes initially thought it was a prank, especially after lock Franco Mostert was named on the blindside flank.

After all, the Lions have never named “Sous” on the No 7 flank before, so why would they do it now ahead of such an important Loftus Versfeld clash?

It certainly kept our writers on their toes.