The Lions might have lost, but coach Cash van Rooyen took great heart from their performance against the All Blacks, even if the team dropped off late in the match.
The hosts led 35-17 early in the second half before New Zealand fought back to win 41-35 and remain unbeaten on their Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry tour.
“We lost the last 12 minutes … just repeated effort and conditioning-wise, you can look at two ways: You can either be really proud of 68 minutes, or you can be really critical about 12,” said Van Rooyen. “For 68 minutes, we really brought it in terms of repeated effort. Hopefully we can fix that additional 12 and more in the next two or three weeks.
“We were also a little bit lucky, one or two forward passes, one or two balls to the ground. They got around us once we were fatigued, they got around us pretty easily, so there’s a little bit of work-on for us.”
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Van Rooyen had long maintained that his team were undercooked on account of them being in pre-season, which would affect their repeat efforts and collisions. Their biggest test, he said, was to test their tempo against the All Blacks, “to see how we could play our game and try to force it upon them”.
“To be in the fight for 77 minutes, if I can call it that, that’s just a proud moment. And I actually liked the feeling in the change room, where we felt we let it slip.”
Addressing the key moments, he pointed to several.
“The intercept is a little bit against the principle of how we want to catch up. Obviously the third scrum, we got penalised for it, a technical call that if it goes the other way, or the scrum before that was a pushover try, if you get a penalty or advantage there, we can have a crack. And then the last two [scrums], obviously, they dominated. Let’s call [the swing] two moments, the intercept try [by All Blacks centre Rieko Ioane] and probably scrum one or two.”
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Reflecting on what the performance means for the season to come, you could sense Van Rooyen was positively surprised.
“The interesting thing is we’re still four or five weeks away, so it’s almost a restart. We’ve got the rest of the week off just for the bodies to heal a little bit, then a tough two weeks in prep where we’ll really get into collision and all the tough stuff. We’ve got a warm-up game against the Sharks, and then it’s Leinster. So it’s a sprint before the marathon.”
Van Rooyen hailed flyhalf Chris Smith’s performance, not least because he was coming off an underwhelming last match (against Leinster) which he wanted to fix.
“His goal-kicking was exceptional, how he bossed us around the field was exceptional. For Chris, he must just keep on doing what he’s doing. If Deon [Fourie] could get the call-up at 37, 38 or 39, he’s still got plenty of time.”
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Captain Francke Horn, meanwhile, spoke of his pride at scoring, emulating his father Francois’ feat against the All Blacks, for Boland, 30 years ago.
“It’s such a special moment. I chatted to Ethan Blackadder [son of former All Black Todd] afterwards, we swapped jerseys, and he was also on the same page of fathers playing against each other, so we’ll probably have a beer later on. Just a surreal moment.
“Probably one of the easiest tries I will score, and I’ve told the front-rowers ‘thank you for that’. I scored five points, and my dad scored six. So he’s still in the lead.”
On the tempo shift during the match and the role of the crowd, he mentioned conditioning.
“We haven’t done too much contact fitness, so there was a time where I looked up at the scoreboard and saw only 15 minutes had passed, and I thought, ‘No, that can’t be true’. I looked at a few of the guys, and we spoke about it at half-time too.
“But luckily, the second wind kicks in. It was an unbelievable start, and I think credit to the crowd, that first 10 minutes they were just so loud and so noisy, and I’m so proud of the guys that we could put up a performance like that.”
Photo: Sydney Seshibedi/Gallo Images
The post Cash: We felt we let it slip appeared first on SA Rugby magazine.
The Lions might have lost, but coach Cash van Rooyen took great heart from their performance against the All Blacks, even if the team dropped off late in the match.
The post Cash: We felt we let it slip appeared first on SA Rugby magazine. Read More
