Lions, Proteas face battles royale
THE JAGUARES ARE AN ALL-ROUND GOOD SIDE Team shows one change, with Ferreira coming in for Orie.
The Lions are looking for back-to-back wins when they host the Jaguares at Ellis Park this afternoon in their second Super Rugby outing – but coach Swys de Bruin was understandably cautious this week about the challenge the big men from the Pampas will bring.
It’s a team that have always managed to get under the Lions’ skins in the past and their explosive halfbacks of Gonzalo Bertranou and Nicholas Sanchez hold a major threat.
“They are virtually a full-on international side, they carry the ball extremely well, they play an interesting style of attack, they have a very good 9/10 combination,” said De Bruin.
“Their whole spine is good, they are an all-round good side. It’s very hard to say specifically which areas we can focus on as they have few weaknesses.”
De Bruin however was happy to virtually “copy and paste”, as he termed it, the team from last week’s Sharks win, with lock Andries Ferreira coming in for Marvin Orie.
“That’s the way we trained with Andries before the Sharks game so I believe we are very settled,” said De Bruin.
The Lions dominated the Sharks’ scrum last week but De Bruin said forward coach Philip Lemmer and Balie Swart from Saru said it’s an ongoing battle.
It could especially cause some sparks to see the confrontation between Lions hooker Malcolm Marx and the tough Agustin Creevy who is the Pumas’ national skipper.
“If you speak to coach Philip and Balie it’s almost a different animal every week, the shapes change, some guys go lower,” he said.
“It’s tough and we have to be able to adapt what you get on the day but they had a few good scrums against the Stormers so we have got to be aware.”
The Sharks caused some havoc with the Lions lineout last weekend and De Bruin said it’s a fact they were indeed extremely concerned about.
“Coach Philip worked very hard on that and we believe it’s been sorted out,” he said.
“But we will have to be on top of our game in every department to beat them.”
Kick-off: 3.05pm.