Depth is key to the Lions success this season

The Emirates Lions may have lost the battle during Vodacom SuperFan Saturday but they are confident their depth will win the war.

Coach Ivan van Rooyen was excited to see the “energy” that the second team, which came on in a mass exchange of all 15 players on the 50 minute mark, brought to the game and how they put the Stormers under pressure.

And that exuberance, coupled with the fact that in many positions there isn’t much to choose between players in positions, should, according to Van Rooyen, help the team as they head into the domestic competition.

It may sound like a stretch but the Lions see their season getting better as they gain more continuity, although their setpiece remains a concern after the pounding it took from the Stormers in the opening half of the game.

Still, in the loose trio, and the midfield for instance, Van Rooyen will have the luxury of having a number of players who can slot in at any time and can urge each other on in terms of competition, and that may well be to their benefit if they can hit their straps at some point.

The domestic competition is likely to be a marathon anyway, and there is the added twist that teams may well lose a number of Bok players if the Rugby Championship goes ahead, leaving the Lions well-placed in terms of team structure.

If that happens, then the loss in the pre-season fixture may not be the worst thing for the Lions, although it would be overly optimistic to say there weren’t a host of work-ons for the team when they return to their base at Johannesburg Stadium this morning.

“We are excited about the depth. We believe we have a group that are close to each other and can give each other other competition. Combinations like Dan Kriel and Mannie Rass did well, Jamba Ulengo did well, Len Massyn did well. So there are a bunch of players from the second side that went on that did well,” Van Rooyen said about his team’s depth.

“That to us is a plus point. There isn’t much to choose between them. So it excites us to see that depth and what we can do in the coming competition.”

While the result didn’t go their way, Van Rooyen was still buoyed by some of the action he saw at Loftus Versfeld.

“It’s not nice not getting the result and there are definitely things we have to work on but there was a lot of exciting things for us. Clearly the setpiece still needs a bit of work, they managed to put us under pressure over there,” he added.

“I also ink that when we kept the ball and managed to build phases, we built pressure. On defence we put pressure on them, but let the pressure slip with a few soft moments. We can feel that we are rusty, we gave the one team 50 minutes and the other 30 minutes and decided it that in the week.

“The second team picked up the pace and energy that we needed.”

And as a consequence he believes they are better enabled now than they were before lockdown when the side was struggling in Super Rugby.

“There are definitely things we feel that are in place better than before Super Rugby stopped. Our kicking game and the way we want to execute it, the players understand what we want to achieve a bit more.

“Defensively we managed to put them under pressure. One or two soft moments let them off the hook. On attack if we can manage to keep our ball longer we can increase the pressure on them.

“They are a quality team and the majority of their team are Springboks. The stop-start motion of the game brought them into it. We allowed them to rest and they are a well-conditioned team. They can put you under pressure and they managed to do that.

“The errors we made brought their setpiece into the game and if we can look after our ball better, we will put more pressure on them.”

Several of the Lions players will be involved in the Springbok Showdown, with the rest of the squad concentrating on their tasks ahead of the kickoff in a fortnight’s time.