Composed Lions set new benchmark
The Lions on Friday completed South African's 'hat-trick club' – teams winning three matches on tour in Australasia.
Warren Whiteley's Lions hung on for a thrilling 18-17 win over the Reds in Brisbane, for their third win on tour – having earlier edged the Blues and Rebels.
It was the first time the Johannesburg-based Lions had won three games on their away trip to New Zealand and Australia.
They joined the Bulls (2007), Sharks (2014), Stormers (2012) and Cheetahs (2013) as other SA teams to have achieved the triple on tour.
The Lions charged down a Quade Cooper drop-goal attempt in injury time in a game in which their famed defence was again the stand-out feature.
"We probably did the hard work in the first half," the Lions captain, Whiteley, said in his post-match reaction.
"We stayed composed when they put us under pressure and we scored some good tries," Whiteley added.
"We are extremely happy with three out of four wins and we're still a bit off our best, we can improve in our set piece."
Reds counterpart James Slipper said his team paid for poor execution.
"Essentially with all the blokes coming back into the side we had a few changes and it's hard to build consistency with that sort of player movement," he said.
"I thought the effort was there, I just think our execution let us down."
The Reds slumped to second-last on the overall standings.
It was a galling defeat for the beleaguered 2011 Super Rugby champions, who had Cooper and Wallaby back James O'Connor among four key players returning from injury.
Instead the Reds crashed to their fifth defeat in six matches, while the Lions climbed to 10th on the back of their third win of the season.
Reds head coach Richard Graham said they are "incredibly disappointed" by this result.
"We put ourselves in a position to win the game," Graham said.
"Had we managed the last portion of the game better we probably could have left here with a win.
"Early on we lacked a bit of cohesion due to introducing so many players back into the backline and there was a noticeable lack of combinations there, but we expected that.
"The longer the game went on, the more cohesive we looked and the more challenging we became. We'll continue to build that heading into our next game against the Rebels."
