VIDEO: No ‘foolishness’ from Lions for the Glasgow clash
REACTION: When you play the Challenge Cup quarterfinals you field your strongest team.
That was the sentiments from Lions head coach Ivan van Rooyen after his team’s 51-28 win over Racing 92 in the Round of 16 clash at Ellis Park on Saturday.
The Lions managed to survive a red card for Emmanual Tshituka in the 18th minute for the seven-try victory.
The result means the Gauteng side will now travel to Scotland to take on Glasgow Warriors in the Challenge Cup quarterfinals.
Without revealing too much, Van Rooyen said he will not fiddle with the winning formula against Franco Smith’s Glasgow side.
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“To get into the quarterfinal in any European competition it would be foolish not to take your strongest team possible,” Van Rooyen said.
“We have to evaluate two or three guys. We have to look at Emmanual Tshituka’s red card, but apart from that it should be a clean bill of health.
“Our initial plan was to prepare here [in Johannesburg] fly to Scotland on Tuesday and arrive there on Wednesday.”
‘Immensely proud’
The Lions were in incredible form and despite missing a player, they showed great character to outplay a Racing 92 side, sporting Springbok Warrick Gelant.
“I am immensely proud. The guys worked extremely hard to get the result, especially with the red card,” Van Rooyen said.
“Racing is a great team, full of Test stars, so we knew we really had to be good.
“If you allow them to run on you, they can cause damage because they have X-factor all over the show so it was important for us to be good defensively.
“Every time they scored we managed to get back on the board and kept the deficit relatively big.
“At one stage we thought there was a little bit of slip. I think sometimes with a red card it is easy to get very defensive-minded.
“However we continued attacking and we were very good.”
The coach is hopeful that his team’s performance against international opposition Racing 92 will see the return of spectators for future games at Ellis Park.
“We are going to play against big European teams and if we can get that 16.00 kick-off we will probably get a little bit more fans.”
#NEWS: @ChallengeCup_ quarterfinals dates and kick-offs! https://t.co/XyTb34s1OB
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