If the Lions are to be considered a serious contender for the Vodacom United Rugby Championship playoffs, they need to beat the DHL Stormers at Ellis Park on Saturday.
Too often over the past six years under coach Ivan van Rooyen the side has scored the odd inspirational victory, only to follow it up with a flat performance a week later.
That in itself, as well as the inconsistency over the season, has been one of the main drivers why they haven’t finished in the top eight for the past four seasons of URC rugby.
Despite the squad developing, and their contracting getting better at keeping their talent in Johannesburg, this has too often been the case and has hampered the side’s ambitions.
After their win over the Hollywoodbets Sharks, which gave them the double this season, and was comprehensive in its scoreline and victory, the Lions now need to follow that up with a win over the Stormers.
The Cape side set the pace early on in the competition, but back to back defeats against the Sharks have left them vulnerable and the Lions will remember how they beat them last year at the same venue, and this season staged a comeback in Cape Town to run the Stormers close.
Part of it is just proving to themselves as a squad that they can back-up a good performance, but there is more to that.
Winning this weekend puts them in a very good position to qualify for the playoffs, gives them momentum with four home games remaining ahead of a tough final fortnight when they need to head to Ireland to play Leinster and Munster.
It also gives them a very good chance of winning the South African shield, and the bragging rights for the season. And of course, it gives them qualification to the Investec Champions Cup, which has never happened before for the Johannesburg side.
On Saturday it was their Springboks - Ruan Venter, Morne van den Berg, Quan Horn and Asenathi Ntlabakanye, who led from the front and this weekend they will need them to do it again.
The Stormers are wounded and will be out to get their campaign back on track. They’re well placed on the log and the pride that was hurt in the two defeats to the Sharks will be a strong motivating factor.
But the Lions need to control their own destiny. They need to prove they can back up a win with another impressive performance. It’s that simple.
Coach Ivan van Rooyen hammered that point at the post match presser, and acknowledged how dangerous the Stormers can be.
“It’s obviously good for us to have this opportunity (to win the Shield), but 110 per cent our focus will be on our process.”
“The Stormers, after playing the Sharks twice, didn’t get the wins. We know how proud they are and the quality that they have. If you’re not going to be 110 per cent ready for the Stormers, then they can absolutely tear you apart.”
Captain Francke Horn was proud his team could bounce back from a horrid performance against the Bulls.
“The performance against the Bulls was not what we want to stand for,” he said.
“We want to be a team that has hunger and plays a good brand of rugby, and we showed that at times against the Sharks.
“There are things to change and things to fix, but that’s every game.” We showed some dominance. We were really hurting after the Bulls game here at home. We had two weeks in training to fix that, and I think we did a good job of that.
“We had a lot of opportunities which we didn’t take, but if you told me before the game that we would get five points, I would have taken it.”
Horn now wants his side to press on and take the momentum forward.
“The Stormers will be hurting after their two losses against the Sharks, so we will have to step up our game,” said Horn.
“I am happy with the performance but we need to keep on going. This was a massive game for us, and next week it’s going to be the same.”
Whether the Lions can control their own destiny waits to be seen, but if they want to compete with the big guns of URC rugby, there is no better time to prove a point than this weekend.