- Lions coach Cash van Rooyen said getting their playing structures right is more important than results at the moment.
- The Lions beat the Sharks 43-40 in their preparation series game, but they did so the hard way.
- They needed a last-minute penalty to win the game after the Sharks fought back from 26-14 down at half-time.
The Lions may have needed a last-minute penalty to condemn the Sharks to another unsuccessful Highveld trip, but their coach Ivan “Cash” van Rooyen said correcting their playing processes is more important than the result.
In beating the Sharks 43-40 at Ellis Park on Saturday afternoon, the Lions led 26-14 at half-time, but a young and ferocious Sharks pack staged a comeback that saw the game tied at 40-all. Tiaan Swanepoel’s late penalty then separated the teams at full-time.
Van Rooyen said he was happy to see the youngsters gutsing it out under pressure when the Sharks were asking all the questions.
“The process is more important. If you take the last 15 minutes and take Jannie du Plessis’s age out of the pack, the average age of the pack was 23. For them to experience that pressure, that experience is better and more important than the result in the bigger picture,” Van Rooyen said.
The drawback of a young side is how the decision making and the dealing with the pressure of specific match situations will improve with more experience.
Van Rooyen, while still happy with his team’s showing, said their ability to deal with and transfer pressure will get better with time, along with their decision-making.
“The decision making can always get better, but we’ll keep on evolving and training well, but what was experience in the 80 minutes was important from a bigger picture perspective,” Van Rooyen said.
“We just need to be consistent in applying pressure and our decision-making when we’re under pressure. We conceded easy and unnecessary points. When we’re under pressure, how we relieve and convert that pressure to keep the opposition under pressure is something we need to be consistent with.”
In what was a try-packed game with plenty of line-breaks and missed tackles, the tempo in the cool Autumnal conditions remained high throughout. Van Rooyen said it may have been the fastest game they’ve played in more than a year.
“The sports scientist came to me after the game and said it’s probably the quickest game we’ve played in the last 12 to 13 months, so it is a little bit of fatigue, a bit of match fitness and maybe one percent of individual fitness, but I think the ball-in-hand stats were pretty high,” Van Rooyen said.