Lions coach Mziwakhe Nkosi gave a brutally forthright assessment of his team’s first Currie Cup defeat after they fell 35-22 to the Sharks at Ellis Park on Saturday.
The Sharks, after a sterling man of the match performance from flyhalf Lionel Cronjé, kept the Lions in check as they surged to their maiden win of the campaign.
Nkosi was most displeased with his charges for allowing the Sharks to dictate matters from the outset.
“We have to throw the first punch and can’t wait for that,” he said about his team’s passive start that helped shape a 20-3 halftime score in favour of the visitors.
What the coach found particularly frustrating was the way in which the Sharks pinned his team inside their own half and suffocated them for space and at times possession.
“Credit to JP [Pietsersen, Sharks coach]. They played rugby in the right areas. We were flat and we didn’t have a spark like we had in previous games. This Lions team cannot wait for things to fall into place. Things didn’t fall into place in the first three games. We had to graft our a*ses off,” lamented the Lions coach.
The Sharks were able to apply the squeeze thanks largely to flyhalf Cronjé’s assertiveness and pinpoint accuracy from first receiver.
“Lionel was outstanding,” said Nkosi. “I can’t remember him playing this well in his career and I’ve watched him since a schoolboy. I thought today was special.”
Conversely the Lions were poor when they booted the ball out of hand. “We didn’t kick smartly. We kicked down their throats instead of finding grass. Lionel will pick you apart if you are not smart enough,” he said.
Despite an encouraging start in the scrums his team was also mostly on the receiving end, conceding many penalties in the set piece.
Though the Lions went into the game with the services of newly Test-capped Ruan Venter, Nkosi believes they didn’t quite get the performance commensurate with the flanker’s vast talents against the Sharks.
“I’m not sure if Ruan had a good game,” he said when asked about Venter. “I don’t think he got us over the gain line. He made a couple of errors.”
The Lions’ woes were compounded early in the second half when they lost lock Ruben Schoeman to a red card, while centre Manuel Rass left the field on a stretcher.
The substitutes however, responded to the challenge and though they scored some thrilling tries later in the half, the sins of the first half caught up with them.
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