Louw still has high expectations for Lions
Lions captain Marius Louw cheerily announced that he is not ready to throw his team from the United Rugby Championship (URC) bus just yet.
His side need a full house of 10 points from their two remaining matches and hope results elsewhere go in their favour to qualify for the tournament’s top eight.
If they are on the URC bus, Louw knows they need to make all their stops before they can harbour thoughts of the playoffs.
“The best we can do is focus on ourselves and take it one game at a time,” Louw said about the matches against Leinster this Saturday and Zebre a week later.
“The idea is to get five points and the other team no points. We can only control what we can control.
“There will be no change in mindset. In fact, we just want to grow and go even harder,” he said.
The Lions have the benefit of playing both games on the highveld and the thin air is an ally Louw is happy to have on Saturday.
“When I was at the Sharks, I played at Ellis Park multiple times and you never get used to it. Travelling here is definitely something we look at.
“They are obviously a very professional team that prides themselves on their work rate.
“It is not as if they’ll ever give up. They haven’t been here and we want to play that into our favour. We want to throw as many punches as we can.”
Playing at a high tempo and taking Leinster out of their comfort zone features high on their list of priorities.
“Set piece is an area we’ve done well in the last while.”
“Whatever we are contesting we want to make it a competition. We want to win the breakdown to make sure we get quick ballr,” Louw said.
“We know they thrive on quick ball and we want to make sure we slow them down. We want to stop them on defence and we want to be direct first. We want to beat them at all the aspects.”