The Emirates Lions had endured a tough start to the season with three narrow losses preceding last week’s nail-biting win against Scarlets. Despite the three out of four losses in the United Rugby Championship, the Lions are 12th on the log due to the four bonus points they managed to get in their first three games.
According to defence coach Barend du Plessis those bonus points have been vital in keeping them somewhere close to the middle of the log.
“We felt all the other games could’ve gone either way. But the most important thing is that we got points out of most of those games, said Pieterse.
“Look, the guys are working hard but the conditions aren’t easy over here. It’s the same for both teams, we both have to train in the wet, go out early in the dark, and come back in the dark. The effort and the off-field work the guys are doing every day, hopefully, will show for us this weekend,”
“The big thing we spoke about over the last three weeks is a little bit more calmness when we get into the scoring zone and then just the work rate in general. It wasn’t as good as we wanted it in those few games."
“And if you look at this last game, I think the work rate, every individual worked very hard. Those were the two points we addressed in this whole competition thus far and in this last game it just came together for us."
This weekend the Lions face Ulster, arguably one of the toughest in the competition, and Pieterse is very aware that it will take a massive effort.
“We need to make sure our basics are good. The guys know the environment that we are going into is harsh. The weather outside is cold, it’s raining, and the stadium will be sold out again, but everyone is ready for what we expect, and we just have to keep our basics simple. It doesn’t help against a classy team like Ulster if we start doing funny things like play from our try-line.”
