Handy exercise, says Ackermann

MIX-AND-MATCH LIONS BACK IN THE GROOVE Final squad to be named after clash with the Stormers.

It might not have been against the best opposition, but the Lions’ 49-19 win against the SupaBabaas XV at Wits on Saturday gave coach Johan Ackermann valuable insight ahead of announcing his final Super Rugby squad.

Ackermann mixed and matched combinations as the Lions took a 28-7 lead at the break, after which he introduced a further 13 substitutions.

“I made it quite clear to the guys regardless of the results of last weekend as well as this weekend that the final squad will only be selected after the Stormers game (on Saturday),” he said.

“We are not getting carried away by any of the results and it’s going to get down to individually assessed performances.

“The idea was to put out two teams for last week and also this week and try to get a bit of combinations going to see at what level every guy is.”

Ackermann said the squad is quite different to the one he started working with last November.

“With the players coming back from Japan, there were different times when players slotted in,” he said.

“Then there are also Faf (de Klerk) and Rohan (Janse van Rensburg) and those guys only joined us in January, so we assessed them at training and we decided to give the guys a really fair opportunity.”

While the Lions suffered a setback when scrumhalf and captain Ross Cronje pulled out with illness, it gave Dillon Smit a chance to start at No 9 and centre Harold Vorster to be tested as captain.

“There were a couple of new faces and a guy like Harold hasn’t played at all last year, while (lock) Andries Ferreira only came back from France last Monday,” said Ackermann.

“So we wanted to see where he is, he didn’t get a lot of game time overseas and so we can go through the entire list.”

“It’s not a question of firstranked and second-ranked, there’s still a lot of positions available to fight for and we have seen last year, with a number of guys out, the next guy must step in.”

The idea was to put out two teams for last week and also this week. Johan Ackermann Lions coach