Lions having a mental meltdown or just being bullied?

OPINION: Lions coach Ivan van Rooyen is sounding like a badly-worn, stuck record.

You can’t call them excuses, because his post-match comments don’t make sense.

Their 15-41 loss to Benetton in Treviso this past weekend leaves them winless this season, in 15th place with just one losing bonus point, and also marks the Lions’ eighth consecutive defeat overseas in the United Rugby Championship.

To then have to listen to drivel like ‘being very disappointed, missed opportunities, and too many errors’ is nauseating.

Even more so when it is interfused in a limp word salad that suggests they were ‘better this week’, or the opposition has a ‘strong counterattack and outside backs’.

Let us take a few steps back, before the losses to Cardiff (20-33), Zebre (20-22), and Benetton (15-41).

The red flags were there for all to see when a Lions URC side (with the odd exception) folded like a badly-stacked deck of cards against Griquas in the Currie Cup Final at Ellis Park on September 20.

They headed abroad with those mental scars for a URC trip that many pundits thought could produce three wins.

Instead, they appeared ‘disinterested’ and at times gave the impression that the players could be on a ‘slow strike’.

If you ever want to see the epitome of a team that appears not willing to put their bodies on the line, go watch reruns of the Lions’ first three rounds.

They are all horror shows.

Then the coach, Van Rooyen, wants us to believe there is progress.

“We felt we were physically dominant and our set pieces were more consistent,” Van Rooyen said

He suggested the scoreline in Treviso wasn’t a true reflection of the physicality and pressure in the game.

To add to the repugnance of his comments, Van Rooyen suggested ‘two late yellow cards’ are to blame for the blow-out of the scoreline in the final 10 minutes.

However, let’s look at the facts.

Benetton was issued a yellow card in the 51st minute, but the Lions were unable to score.

The Lions were yellow-carded in the 68th minute, and the Italian team scored almost immediately.

To rub salt into the already festering wounds, both teams were yellow-carded in the dying minutes, but Benetton only scored.

The Lions’ set pieces, a strength of theirs in the past, appear to be a weakness.

They have conceded 29 penalties, of which seven have been in the scrums.

Their line-out success rate is barely above 80 percent, and their 64 missed tackles (more than 20 per game) put them at an inadequate and unacceptable 78 percent success rate.

Ignore, for a moment, the shocking stats.

Go look at the defeatist body language in those games and how easily the two Italian teams bullied the Lions forwards in the physical exchanges. It begs the question: ‘Are the players carrying mental scars from their inability to win the Currie Cup Final against a scratch country team, or are they simply just not good enough for anything above a domestic competition?’

@rugby365com