Danger lurks in Lions’ den
Sharks without the Beast, and hosts have a proud record at Ellis Park
NOT since April 30 last year has a team come to Ellis Park and beaten the Lions. In fact, no team has come to the home of the Lions and even given them a scare.
And today, one’s got to wonder why anything will be different when the Sharks visit Joburg?
It has been one-way traffic since the Hurricanes inflicted a 50-17 defeat on Johan Ackermann’s men almost a year ago, with the Super Rugby side winning eight games on the trot (six last year and two this year) and four Currie Cup matches, too. In that time, the Lions have scored 53 Super Rugby tries and 30 Currie Cup tries.
In seven of their last eight matches on home soil the Lions have scored more than 40 points; three of those times they’ve gone over 50, and only once have they been kept to a score in the 30s ... and that by the Sharks in the latter stages of last year’s competition.
On that day the Lions scored five tries to the Sharks’ two and won 37-10 and if the visitors are to take any confidence into this evening’s game it’s that they’ve done fairly okay in Joburg in recent times.
That said, nothing less than a victory should be deemed acceptable ... especially for a team like the Sharks.
There is no doubt Ackermann’s men will be the huge favourites again today in this round six Super Rugby clash; they have been scoring tries aplenty and winning well and their home record is now something to be proud of.
They are also very close to being at full-strength today, missing only Julian Redelinghuys, Lionel Mapoe and Ruan Combrinck of the potential first choice players, while the Sharks are without the massively influential Beast Mtawarira and Pat Lambie.
The visitors’ biggest test though will be whether they can handle the pace of the Lions game, especially on the Highveld, and whether their bench-sitters will be able to make the necessary impact when called upon later on.
Johan Ackermann’s men play at a ferocious speed, ask questions all around the field, and there’s no let-up when the replacements enter the fray.
Also today, there will be fire in the belly of the Lions players who dropped their standards badly in the second half against the Kings last weekend and will want to right those wrongs.
In fact, it’s something hooker Malcolm Marx said would certainly be the case.
“We’ve got a responsibility to play at a certain level and what happened in PE is not what the Lions are about. We’ve looked at what went wrong, and put it behind us, but of course we will want to make up for it now,” he said this week.
The Sharks will certainly bring fire to the match but they’ll be tested in the scrums without Mtawarira while skipper Tera Mtembu and his fellow loosies, the Du Preez twins, Daniel and Jean-Luc, face a massive challenge trying to keep the free-running Lions back-row players in check.
It’s at the back where the Lions may prove to be just too good for the visitors. No one has been able to contain the likes of Faf de Klerk, who will have plenty to prove after missing out on an invite to next week’s Bok training camp, Elton Jantjies, Rohan Janse van Rensburg, Courtnall Skosan and Andries Coetzee in recent times on home soil and they’ll again look to outsmart the Sharks with their handling, running lines, pace and width in their game.
If it opens up early on in the 80 minutes there will be only one winner, the Lions. But even if it doesn’t, the home side will be the heavy favourites to pick up win number five.