Frustrated Steyn not mincing his words
VIDEO: Cheetahs coach Frans Steyn pulled no punches ahead of his team’s second outing in the Challenge Cup against the Georgian team, Black Lion, in Bloemfontein this weekend.
The Georgians registered their first-ever win on South African soil in a historic victory over the Cheetahs, clinching a dramatic 39-38 win.
Steyn said nothing more than a win will satisfy him, and tore into his team’s lack of urgency in their first encounter last Friday.
“There’s a lot that needs to happen for me to be happy. We need to perform on the field, then I will be happy,” a stern-looking Steyn said on Wednesday.
“At halftime, I thought we were going to give them a hiding. And after halftime, it felt like we lost energy and the urgency to finish them off, the urgency to get more points, the urgency in all areas of the game.
“We talk about the graveyard; this is our home, and we need to make that count. We didn’t do that the past weekend.
“It wasn’t good enough; we never should’ve put ourselves in a position like that,” Steyn said, adding: “There were a lot of individual errors and even through the Currie Cup we talked about it, and last weekend it bit us.
“In saying that, we need to win on the weekend.
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“We need to start winning. We want to build a nice place where everybody wants to come and play. But if we don’t win, it’s not good enough.
“We’ve been building, we’ve got a nice squad, we’ve got good people here, everybody a the company is working hard, and I think we let them down.
“We could’ve been a lot better in certain areas, and hopefully we can turn it around this week.
“We need to be more consistent through 80 minutes.”
The Georgian team is the other invitee in the Challenge Cup, which kicks off in place in December 2025.
“We don’t have a lot of games before the EPCR [Challenge Cup], so we need to give players game time to see where we are.
Steyn confirmed that a warm-up game against the Lions ahead of the Challenge Cup is planned for November 20 at Ellis Park.
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