The Fidelity ADT Lions secured an emphatic 52-29 bonus-point victory over the Airlink Pumas in their Round 2 Carling Currie Cup clash at 10bet Ellis Park.
Following the win, head coach Mziwakhe Nkosi expressed immense pride in his young squad's performance but noted a few critical areas for improvement.
“I’m happy with the five points; it keeps us in the race for the playoffs,” Nkosi said. “It was a big challenge for these guys to come back and give a performance with only two training sessions.”
The Lions showed massive improvement compared to their opening fixture.
“Last week was challenging; a contributing factor was probably a bit of cobwebs,” said Nkosi. “Today we saw a whole lot more cohesion and sticking to the things that we wanted to do.”
“The more we play, the better the cohesion, the better the collisions, and the better the set-piece will be. It’s just game time.”
Despite the dominant scoreline, Nkosi stated that "youthful naivety" between the 69th and 75th minutes was the only barrier keeping it from being a perfect performance. He pointed out that his team failed to completely bury the match earlier, letting the Pumas stay alive for too long.
“I think you still saw a little bit of youthful naivety, particularly from minute 69 to 75,” Nkosi explained. “We didn’t really bury the game and take it away from the Pumas until later on. But having said that, we’ve got to keep fighting with these players.”
“It’s two more first-class games behind them, and hopefully they grow and grow in terms of being exposed to the rigours of first-class rugby.”
“If you look at that Pumas team, their pack came at us just before the half, and we had to learn one or two lessons there, particularly from a collision point of view.”
Despite the minor slip-ups, the coach was thrilled that his players bounced back from the previous week's late loss to the Cheetahs. He expects the squad to start truly believing in their own talent.
“If you look at the game we played last week against the Cheetahs, we thought we were a bit unfortunate, but only of our own doing,” Nkosi added.
“Today, having played the way we wanted to play, we put together a whole lot more positive things than what we did last week.”
“No doubt there will be one or two smiles in the changeroom. They will start believing in their own talent, believe in the way they want to play, and grow more and more in their own abilities.”