The Lions will be eyeing a fast and accurate start when they take on Racing 92 in Saturday’s Challenge Cup round-of-16 clash at Ellis Park on Saturday.
The home side head into this fixture in a rich vein of form as they have won their last three United Rugby Championship (URC) matches against Glasgow Warriors, the Bulls and Benetton.
Can’t repeat Benetton start
Those victories will give the Lions plenty of confidence although it’s imperative that they do not repeat what happened in their victory against Benetton when the Italian dominated most of the match.
The Johannesburg-based outfit had to dig deep during the final quarter of that game in Treviso when they wiped out a 15-point deficit to clinch a deserved 32-28 triumph.
“That last 20 minutes (against Benetton) we managed to turn it around and that is how we need to start against Racing,” Lions head coach Ivan van Rooyen told the Citizen.
“They are also going to be travelling (Lions back to SA from Italy and Racing from France), so it is going to be important for us to be accurate this week in training and really start like a house on fire against them to put them under pressure.
“It is important for us on Tuesday and Wednesday to be spot on, on what we want to do in terms of fix-its and how we want to play against Racing.
“But our last two weeks of preparations showed in the last 20 minutes (against Benetton) and that’s the one area we want to keep on working on and improving going into this weekend’s match.”
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These are challenging times for the South African franchises as apart from the URC, Challenge Cup and Champions Cup – which the Stormers, Bulls and Sharks are participating in – the Currie Cup is running concurrently with those competitions.
As the weakest of their country’s teams, the Lions’ depth is being tested severely and they will have to manage their players carefully during the upcoming weeks.
Must get balance right
“This is the first time that all three competitions are running simultaneously. So it is important for us to get the balance of URC, EPCR and Currie Cup correct,” added Van Rooyen.
“We want to field the strongest possible team in all three competitions. So we don’t have the luxury of experimenting and we have been upfront to the players about that.
“Hopefully we are going to travel a fair bit over the next four to six weeks, which will mean that we are still alive in the competitions, so it will be important for us to keep it simple and get the guys as ready as we can for the games on Saturdays.”