LIONS ARE DOING A LOT RIGHT
Is a giant stirring in Johannesburg? You wouldn’t have said that for much of the Vodacom URC era, but there are signs of life emanating from Ellis Park.
The Fidelity SureDrive Lions, as we now call them, have over the past few seasons probably become the least fashionable of the South African teams.
And for good reason. They are the one local side that has yet to finish in the top half of the table and by doing so secure a place in the URC playoffs and qualify for the following season’s Investec Champions Cup.
This is the fifth season of the URC, so the sample size is a big one. Couple that with the fact that the Lions play in a stadium that, probably mostly just because of where it is situated, looks a couple of sizes too big for them.
Everyone loves to go to Ellis Park to watch the Springboks play, and for good reason. The atmosphere on international days at the stadium is unsurpassable.
But for URC games and for EPCR Challenge Cup games, which has been what the Lions have been restricted to, the venue has looked cavernous with its wide open spaces.
That wasn’t the case though when the Lions made three Super Rugby finals in a row when they had first Johan Ackermann and then Swys de Bruyn as their coach.
Lions supporters were plentiful, voluble and passionate, something I know only too well because back then we used to have a feedback section at supersport.com and yours truly was enemy No 1 in the eyes of some Lions fans who felt I should be more enthusiastic about their team.
But after watching them beat the Sharks, Stormers and Edinburgh in their last three matches, and in each one managing it with some style, there’s no lack of enthusiasm right now.
Indeed, if you were to ask me which is the most entertaining team to watch, it would be hard to look beyond the Lions.
Built in the trenches. Finished at the top of SA’s conference. 🏆
— vodacomrugby (@VodacomRugga) March 22, 2026
This wasn’t luck. This is Lions rugby.@Vodacom #URC | #ExtraOrdinaryLeague | Fidelity SecureDrive @LionsRugbyCo pic.twitter.com/mZ7cyil0r0
There was a wow factor to several of the eight tries they scored against Edinburgh last weekend and Schalk Burger, in his role as a SuperSport in studio analyst, had it on the money when he said there were at least three tries that would qualify for the tries of the season highlights package.
Certainly it’s hard to think of a team that is more lethal from transition currently and the try the Lions scored on the stroke of halftime where they ran 95 metres to score was both typical of the Lions and also surely a very demoralising try for Edinburgh to concede.
There is a caveat to the Lions in the form of the warning that they’ve often dazzled only to fall apart late in the season, but if it is entertainment value you are after then Ellis Park is a place worth visiting again, and not just when the Boks are in town.
THE FOCUS ON CONTINUITY IS COMING THROUGH
It’s asking to be laughed at if you suggest that what the Lions have got right is the focus on continuity that they seemed so bent on for a long time.
If you compare the current Lions team with the Stormers, who were mentioned last week in this column as a club with laudable continuity, they don’t quite compare - players who starred for them in the first few seasons of the URC like the Tshituka brothers, Jordan Hendrikse, Edwill van der Merwe and Ruan Dreyer are now at the Sharks.
However, there is a core of players who have played through the past few seasons that have been retained on long-term contracts, and Quan Horn, Morne van den Bergh, Francke Horn, Ruan Venter and Henco van Wyk now being joined by relative newcomers who we can get really excited about.
Their openside flanker Siba Mahashe is involved in almost everything that goes right for the Lions on the field these days, and Bronson Mills is a decent inside centre.
Then there are the SA under-20 stars like Batho Hlekani and Haashim Pead that bring so much promise for the future and the Lions’ success in securing the former from under the Sharks’ noses - Hlekani was registered at the Sharks when he won the Junior World Cup with the Junior Boks - is an example of a war that the Lions appear to be winning now that they were previously losing.
The Lions’ culture also can’t be questioned if you consider that it is often defence that speaks to a team’s attitude.
The Lions won comfortably last week but were forced to make three times as many tackles in the game as Edinburgh were and it was a similar story in the second half against the Stormers, where at one stage the Lions were down to 13 players but still kept the Cape team from crossing the line.
Or at least prevented them from dotting down, as the Stormers were held up three times.
In case you needed a reminder… 🏆
— Lions (@LionsRugbyCo) March 26, 2026
@Vodacom #URC | #ForOurCity | #LionsPride pic.twitter.com/U2DvAWUOTp
TAKING THE R56 PROVIDES REMINDER OF THE RICHES OF COUNTRY AREAS
So this week finds me on the road again. At my timeshare at Fairways at Drakensberg Gardens near Underberg to be precise. I think I have written about this before, but it is a thought that is a fairly perennial one when following what is my preferred route from the Cape to this part of KZN, and definitely the quickest - the R56.
I refer to it as the R56 but there’s a lot more to the route than just the R56. It’s the N1 from Cape Town to Beaufort West, from where you turn right onto the R61. You cross the border of Western Cape/Eastern Cape somewhere along that road and after 140 kilometres you turn left at Aberdeen (the one in the Eastern Cape obviously and not the one in Scotland) to continue on the R61 which fuses with the N9 for the remaining 53 kilometres to Graaff Reneit.
You continue on the N9 to Middelburg if you want to do the R56 properly, and that is the quickest route to southern KZN, but I turn off on the about 40 kilometres beyond Graaff Reneit to Craddock, now Nxube, because Mountain Zebra National Park is one of the best and most underrated game reserves in South Africa.
I’ve seen brown hyena there, my only other sighting of that animal was in the Kgalagadi. From Nxube you travel past Komani, formerly Queenstown, and parts of the old Transkei (Lady Grey is now Cacadu) to Cala, where you turn left on the R430 up through an impressive gorge to Ikhowe, which was formerly Elliot.
And it is invariably when driving through what was once Elliot, with the impressive southern Drakensberg in the distance, that I always get onto the thought process of what the country areas give to SA rugby and why they should never be neglected. For Elliot produced two World Cup winning Springboks, Os du Randt and Mark Andrews.
And if I had proceeded on the N9 to Middelburg and then turned right onto the R56, it would have taken me through Molteno. Mark’s cousin, Keith, also a Bok, was from Molteno. His father owned the hotel there for many years.
Anyway, Keith once told me that his interest in rugby was piqued by watching a tour game between the All Blacks and North Eastern Cape in 1970. I’ve looked it up, it was a one sided game - the Kiwis won 85-0. And the first ever game featuring the All Blacks in Burgersdorp, when NE Cape were known as NE Districts, was also a whitewash - 27-0.
The point though is that the kids in those far flung areas did get the inspirational opportunity to see overseas heroes in the flesh in those days, and it was a momentous enough moment for Keith Andrews to mention it.
My journey didn’t take me past Burgersdorp this time, but a return journey from KZN a few years ago where I drove to Nxuba after spending a night in Clarens in the Eastern Free State, did take me past there and I am pretty sure I drove past the farm belonging to one Johan Goosen, the gifted recently retired flyhalf who might well have played many more games for South Africa were it not for his decision to spend much of his career overseas.
Speaking of which, maybe there’s something the water in that region, for Frans Steyn, who also spent much of his illustrious and decorated career in a tug-of-war between home, the Springboks and French clubs, is from Aliwal North. Just up the road.
THE COASTAL ROUTE IS A FERTILE RUGBY BREEDING GROUND TOO
All these relatively recent top players all from pretty much the same region illustrates the point of how important the country area are, and I haven’t even gotten onto the subject of places like Qonce, once King William’s Town, which gave us Lukhanyo Am (schooled at DF Malan), as well as Aphelele Fassi, born in King and schooled at Dale College, which also gave us so many others.
I will be taking the N2 through that area on the return journey, unless I opt to do the R72 (between East London and Gqeberha via Port Alfred), which goes close to Tsholomnqa, which gave us Makazole Mapimpi, last week’s centurion for the Sharks and also schooled in King (Jim Mvabasa SS School), so more on that a couple of weeks from now.
THERE’S A DILEMMA TO FACE BEFORE ALL BLACKS ARRIVE
Mention of the All Black game against NE Cape was supposed to be a prelude to a subject that is bugging me - that being how the local franchise teams are going to properly deliver the return to the old tour vibe that is almost as big a part of the Greatest Rivalry Tour concept as the fact that the two historically strongest nations on earth will be playing each other in a series.
You’d imagine that local franchise players who do not play much or any international rugby would love to play in a game that will enable them later in life to tell their grandchildren that they played the All Blacks and faced down the Haka. There’s a lot that is positive about having the All Blacks play the Stormers, Sharks, Bulls and Lions.
Some of the provincial games of the past against New Zealand and the British and Irish Lions became a part of South African folklore, and when Andy Leslie’s All Black team came here in 1976 they lost to Western Province, Northern Transvaal and Free State.
Oh, by the way, they started that tour with a 24-0 win over a combined Border/Eastern Cape team in East London. Rugby must have been strong in the so called platteland unions in those days. Although I haven’t seen any evidence of NE Cape ever scoring a point against the All Blacks.
Back though to the Greatest Rivalry tour - unlike in the days of yore, this tour will see the tourists play against four franchise teams that will be slap bang in the middle of their off-season.
There’s bound to be a lot made of the competitiveness of the franchise/club games when the tour starts, for the lack of competitiveness of those matches has been a talking point for every tour (which up to now in the professional era has usually been the British and Irish Lions) due to the national players going into camp weeks before the series starts and hence not being available for their provinces/franchises.
Presumably Bok coach Rassie Erasmus will attempt to release some of his players to play in the franchise games, but even if he does the modern SA rugby landscape, with the national team playing to the southern international calendar and the club teams to the northern calendar, throws a massive curveball into even the best laid plans.
I asked the Sharks CEO Shaun Bryans how his team intends dealing with the challenging situation. He didn’t have an answer, but said that the players would be eager to have the experience of playing against the All Blacks.
There’s no denying that, but on a practical level how is that going to work when the last game the URC teams would have played would have been two months for those who miss out on the knock-outs or go out early and a month for a team that manages to reach the final?
There’s going to be a proper dilemma to face down for while a good performance against the All Blacks in a high profile game might just re-engage fans that have drifted away from franchise/club rugby, a competitive performance that doesn’t deliver an historic win, say a team laden with URC players loses 33-23, will quickly be forgotten if when the bread and butter competition, the URC, gets into full swing that team finds playing in the off-season compromised their wider campaign.