Emirates Lions head coach Ivan van Rooyen said following discussions with the senior players, they decided to follow a conservative and more measured approach to keep their playoff aspirations alive. The 26-06 win over Connacht promoted them to the 13th position on the United Rugby Championship table with 35 points.
“We changed the captaincy, which I felt made a big difference. The execution was also a bit better. We had a good chat with Jaco, the senior guys and the team about being a bit more conservative, "just do your job well", and it paid off.” Van Rooyen said.
Captain Jaco Visagie explained the changes they made and why they went for the post late in the match.
“We were more conservative. We said that we’re not going to play in our half, and we managed that very well. We got the 50-50 calls on the attack. We wanted to get the five points and unfortunately, we fell short."
“There were some questions on why we opted to go for the posts, but at the end of the day, you have to win first."
“If you look at the game, there were opportunities to score tries after we went for the posts. Our game management was good. Unfortunately, we squandered some try-scoring opportunities, but overall, I feel our game management was spot on today.”
“We focused first on how we wanted to play and how we’re going to achieve it, and everyone stuck to that. A good start helped us to keep that positive body language. I actually would’ve preferred that we got the kick-off, but we didn’t."
“We stuck to our structure. When they kicked onto us, we exited and gave them an attacking line-out and stuck to our defensive plan we worked on during the week and won possession back."
Van Rooyen said, “Because our game management was good and we felt in control, and we managed to execute what we wanted to do. We were quite calm because we felt we executed our plan on attack, defence, as well as in our kicking game."
“We felt during the first half that if we had another breakdown or dynamic phase of attack, we could have scored a couple of tries. But we also knew that because we were so clinical that somewhere we would get that opportunity.”
