After a spirited and exhilarating five- match winning streak, the Lions’ hopes of making the Super Rugby play-offs were dealt a massive blow with their loss to the Bulls.
Lions coach Johan Ackermann lamented his team’s inability to play for the full 80 minutes and sounded even more concerned about their final stretch in the competition as they face the high flying Highlanders this week in Johannesburg, followed by two challenging encounters against the Brumbies and the reigning champions, the Waratahs.
Further exacerbating the Lions’ dilemma is the fact that some of their players won’t be available for most of this week due to the national team training camp in Johannesburg, and Ackermann is concerned about his players returning jaded ahead of their encounter against the Highlanders who annihilated the Sharks 48-15 on Saturday.
“ Ja, obviously it is going to be very difficult for us going forward as all of the teams we play are in the top seven, with the exception of the Cheetahs. That shows you the amount of rugby still lying ahead and the quality of the teams we are going to play against,” said Ackermann.
“The Highlanders are going to be a massive challenge and they will have a lot of confidence from the way they are playing and how they punished the Sharks. It is another big game for us and we will have to juggle that with players who are going to the Springboks as well. That is going to be challenging and if we get them back tired (on Thursday) we’ll somehow have to overcome that hurdle.”
The Lions, though, are not out of the hunt for a play-off berth as they are currently in eighth spot on the log and wins against the Highlanders, Brumbies and Waratahs would see them climb into the top six places on the log and secure themselves a play-off berth.
However, they will need to be consistent in their play and ensure they don’t repeat the kind of poor start they displayed against the Bulls where they conceded two soft tries in the first half. As much as the Lions threatened to steal victory at the end of the game at Loftus Versfeld in similar fashion to how they managed to beat the Bulls a month ago, Ackermann conceded that his team were dominated in all facets of the game.
“In the first half we were poor. Even with ball in hand and almost at every contact we lost the ball. We looked a bit nervous but credit must go to the Bulls who played a good game especially in that first half. They spread the ball wide and played with a lot of freedom. They punished us on every mistake we made, every line-out that we lost, every fifty-fifty ball in the air that we lost and they were clinical in finishing that off,” Ackermann said.