Horn back as Lions search for consistency

The Emirates Lions will welcome back Quan Horn to their side as they still live in hope of making the Vodacom United Rugby Championship top eight and qualifying for the Champions Cup next season.

The Lions, who are 11th on the log at the moment, five points behind the eighth-placed Benetton, desperately need to beat Cardiff in their second-last home game of the season if they are to have any chance of qualifying. Considering Cardiff last won a game on 26 December last year, but have been desperately unlucky, losing several of their games by less than seven points, the Lions should go in as favourites for the match.

Yet, even with Horn back, who missed the Munster game, the Lions biggest issue has been with themselves as the only consistency they have seen is inconsistency this season.

The Lions are masters of playing one good game and then following it up with a poor showing, almost hampering their own campaign in the process.

“We need to get as many points out of this game as possible,” forwards coach Barend Pieterse said, underlining the fact that they still believe they have a chance of making the top eight.

“It’s something we speak about every day as a coaching staff. I mentioned it before the Leinster game as well – we are up and down,” Pieterse said.

“That’s been our season this whole season, from game one: good game, bad game. That’s something we need to look at ourselves, how we can improve that.

“That is something that needed improvement yesterday already, because if we want to be successful as a union and play in the Champions Cup, then that’s something we need to be better at.

“Unfortunately, where we slacked a little bit against Munster is when we had the ball we also slowed it down.

“That is something we can be better at. When we are in charge of the game, if it’s our line-out, we must try and speed it up. If Cardiff are clever, they will try to copy and paste a lot of the things that Munster did.

SET-PIECE EXECUTION

Pieterse will be looking to get the Lions set-piece firing again as well as setting a platform for their backs, and Horn in particular, to fire off.

“We have to be better in the execution of our set-piece. We have to be in their faces and not let them run onto us. On defence, we have to get off the line, set quickly.

“We have to give the backs solid enough ball from our scrums and line-outs, and when we are close to the tryline, we have to get away with points.”

But to do that they need to be consistent, and the secret to that has been the story of their past few seasons of disappointment for Lions fans.