The Emirates Lions have taken a leaf out of Chasing the Sun and will be chasing the scrum this weekend against Munster in Vodacom United Rugby Championship action at Emirates Airline Park.
The scrum has become a potent weapon for the Lions of late and while Munster confirmed their status as defending champs with a big win at Loftus Versfeld against the Vodacom Bulls, the Lions are backing their scrum to be a potent force in Saturday’s game.
The Lions will be looking for another win to give them a chance of making the top eight and therefore the playoffs of the competition, as well as qualification for the Investec Champions Cup next season.
Scrum coach Juilian Redelinghuys admitted the team had copied some of the Bok tactics with live scrums, as detailed in the Chasing the Sun series, and it had paid dividends. The Boks have prided themselves on live scrumming sessions and the Wednesday scrumming session has almost become legendary as it is often tougher than what players encounter in the game.
“I really believe the strength of the pack is the competition at this moment between the guys. We’ve got five great tightheads, and in the looseheads we’ve got Morgan Naude, we’ve got JP Smith. All these guys scrum against each other every week and really make each other better,” Redelinghuys said.
“All of us have watched Chasing the Sun 2 and that’s what you can see with the Boks as well. Their toughest scrum opposition is on Wednesdays, not on Saturdays.
BOMB SQUAD
“It’s lekker for us to say we can use our subs and impact players like a Bomb Squad and expect the same set-piece. And if they’re competing against, say, a second-string front row, we should get more dominance.
“And always when I look at the Springboks and their team selections I always use to see subtle rotations and for us, it’s what the game needs. There’s a lot of things to consider and obviously the scrum is a big part of it.”
With Munster’s win at Loftus Versfeld, the Lions know all too well what awaits them this weekend, but as Redelinghuys points out, they are one of the tougher teams to break down on the field.
“From the Irish teams, if you can put a word like “tough” on one of them, it’s them and Connacht that are really tough teams,” Redelinghuys said.
“They’ve got that never-say-die attitude, and there’s a reason they won the URC last year; they played their quarterfinal, semifinal and final away, and they managed to find a way to win. It speaks a lot to their way of play and their attitude, just the fight they have in them.
“Their coaches drive that really hard, which you can see, and in our view, they are a really tough team and you can’t just think they’ll go lie down even though you’re ahead. Like against the Bulls, who started to get an upper hand but Munster never quit or threw the towel in, and kept fighting hard.”
Now that the Lions know what fight they are in for, they will be hoping for a repeat performance from last week to banish the inconsistency that has plagued them all season and hope that leads to a second win on the trot at home.