Lions coach rues 'terrible' first half
REACTION: Lions coach Mzwakhe Nkosi pulled no punches in his assessment of his sides’ fifth round Currie Cup loss against the Cheetahs in Bloemfontein on Saturday.
It was a game of two halves after the home side coasted to a huge lead in the first 40 minutes.
The Lions fought back gallantly in the second half, and almost overturned the deficit, but the Cheetahs proved to be too strong.
Nkosi was not a happy man at the post-man press conference and bluntly stated that his charges were ‘terrible’ in the first half.
He also said there is no room for error in the rest of the competition if the Lions want to reach the semifinals.
“We were absolutely terrible in the first half. And credit to Frans and the Cheetahs, I thought they were outstanding, in particular in their forward play, set piece and maul they were outstanding,” Nkosi stated.
“I thought we showed a bit of fight there at the end and gave ourselves a chance to win it, but in any professional game, you give a team a 24-point head start, you are going to make it hard for yourself to win.
“For us [going forward] there is no margin for error. You probably want one or two results to go your way.
“We let slip on opportunity today to probably get a home semifinal. One more win would’ve given us a home semifinal.
“We didn’t play any rugby. In the second half we were fresh,” he said, adding, “We didn’t spend much energy in the first half. We didn’t come all the way to play the way we did, especially in the first half,” giving a huge sigh as he said this.
Lions captain Darrien Landsberg agreed with his coach and lamented his side’s poor discipline.
Lions’ flyhalf Lubabalo Dobela was yellow carded for a high tackle. During this time, they conceded two tries at the hands of Cheetahs hooker Marko Janse van Rensburg giving the Cheetahs a 19-0 lead.
The Lions were reduced to 14 again 20 minutes later when lock Ruben Schoeman was sin-binned for collapsing a maul in the red zone, and Cheetahs fullback Clayton Blommetjies struck for the bonus-point try.
However, a late surge by the visitors saw them score some beautiful tries through Angelo Davids and Rynhardt Jonker.
“We made it tough for ourselves, and our discipline wasn’t good enough,” the captain said.
“And when your discipline isn’t good enough, you find yourself in your half the whole time and that’s exactly what happened.
“We made it tough for ourselves, conceding those two mauls tries, our discipline wasn’t good enough.
“Obviously the scrum calls didn’t go our way, so that made it difficult for us.”
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