Patience will bring giant to life

The end of the league stage of the Absa Currie Cup season brought to a conclusion what on the face of it can only be described as a horrific year for the Lions.

The union appeared to be in crisis in late May/early June when previous coach Loffie Eloff was relieved of his position following an umpteenth Super 14 failure. Former Springbok coach Jake White’s company, Winning Ways, were invited to conduct an audit, and the central message that came out of that audit was that the Lions were unconditioned and unprofessional.

The manner in which the change of regime was affected was rumoured to cause unhappiness among those few senior Lions players who were not either retiring after the Super 14 or joining a mass exodus to overseas pastures. The threatened strike did not materialise, but the way they just gave up against the British and Irish Lions suggested an onfield strike of sorts.

But that was just a week after the change of coach, which was effectively not really even a change of coach for Hans Coetzee was just seen as a caretaker. Most importantly, it was before Winning Ways, which offers the rugby acumen of White and Eddie Jones, among others, for the Lions to tap into on a consultancy basis, had signed their contract with the Lions.

The Lions were in disarray against their British namesakes simply because that was what they were - no one was sure what was going to happen, and while he had not been successful as a coach, Eloff was liked by many of the players. White is a stark contrast to Eloff when it comes to discipline.

The Lions team that finished the Currie Cup with a close defeat to the Sharks in Durban before beating high-riding Western Province was, however, a much improved unit to the one that finished the Super 14, even though it was probably inferior on paper.

The current Lions team lacks when it comes to experience, talent and skill, but they did deliver this season on the mission statement that was issued by White at the press conference which I attended in Johannesburg in June where the Winning Ways partnership with the Lions was announced.

To refresh memories, White was adamant the union did not have the players to be talking about trophies, and he handed out a couple of pages of statistics that pointed to the Lions’ lack of physical conditioning.

But there were two things that White said that stick clearly in the memory: firstly, he promised that he would improve the Lions’ defensive system, which he rated as hopeless, and secondly he would ensure that they would play to the last whistle of every game.

Did the Lions fail to deliver on that promise? To answer that question it is necessary to look at the facts. Although they lost several games narrowly, they did not concede a four try bonus once in 14 starts. And over the past eight days I have now spoken to two separate provincial managements who have lauded the Lions’ defensive system and remarked that their match against them was the most physical of the season.

The Lions ended the Currie Cup in the top three in terms of defensive performance, and the only thing that really separated them in the end from a team like WP, who finished second, was their attacking record. The Lions just never scored enough tries, which might be down to the lack of a real top-class flyhalf, something Winning Ways long ago identified as a problem area.

That they played to the last whistle in every game can be established from the number of matches where they fought back from deficits. To beat WP like they did in their last match when their season was effectively ended the previous week with their massive effort against the Sharks took a lot of guts. Clearly this was not a team that lacked commitment.

They did not make the semifinals, but in the end the only top team they did not beat at least once was the Sharks, and yet they came within two points of that in Durban. They beat the Bulls at Ellis Park, and should have beaten them in the first-round game, when they led 13-0 at halftime before bottling it in the second half.

That defeat was down to inexperience, and as WP coach Allister Coetzee said a week ago, the securing of a few experienced players to help guide the younger ones is key to the Lions’ chances of getting over the line as winners more consistently.

The Lions are talking to several top experienced players, including England lock Simon Shaw, and if they can secure a clutch of such players to fill the key positions, the groundwork done in this Currie Cup season in introducing some structure and discipline to the Lions play may yet prove an important step in the right direction.

The key though for the Lions is patience, for several current players are also looking at other possibilities, and there is no magic, overnight fix.