“It’s Definitely Going To Be A Tough One” – Marius Louw

 

The Emirates Lions will cross the Jukskei River on Saturday to play the Vodacom Bulls at Loftus Versveld at 15:00 (SA Time) in a Round 9 postponed match of the United Rugby Championship.

Captain Marius Louw said he is confident that the Emirates Lions can continue with their good recent record against South African rivals.

“Over the past few years, the Lions have struggled to win against South African teams, but I think we got that monkey off our back last year. So now it’s just about sticking to our process and getting a good performance in before going on a little break."

Asked his opinion of what he expects from the Vodacom Bulls the weekend he said he expects a tough day at the office.

“They’ve played a lot of good rugby over the last few weeks, especially at home.”

“We know how dangerous they are, very physical, and they spread the ball wide with their backs, so it’s definitely going to be a tough one.

Louw was careful to blame fatigue for their poor performance against the Ospreays and said that their performance was not up to standard.

“I think we were a little bit disappointed with our performance over the weekend. Our discipline also wasn’t up to scratch, so that’s definitely something we’ll look into."

“It’s very uncharacteristic of us, especially in the last 10 minutes, to let go like that. So yes, it was definitely a discussion point going into this weekend.

“We let them in with our discipline and then in the last seven minutes it was our defence, it was not good enough. We didn’t get off the line."

“We started to wait for them and they ran onto us. They got in behind us, they got offloads and I don’t think those are our character."

"It just comes down to working a little bit harder because we do identify the space and where we need to go. It’s something we’re going to look into this weekend and make sure our intent is where it needs to be.”