Maak die Leeuwe almal Bokke move takes a knock.

I read a lot of stuff about how close the game was. It wasn't. But it was tough and the Highlanders took their foot off the pedal towards the end when they were also struggling with a lot of injuries.  But by then the game was over. 
The Highlanders were far more incisive, more than doubling the metres per run. Not totally surprising because of the interceptions....but they came because the phase play was going nowhere.
The Highlanders also  dominated the scrums until the subs came on...so much for Tokkie's theory NZ teams can't scrum.
The Lions produced phase after phase, but it always felt like the mistake would come before the line break. And the Highlanders were clinical in cashing in on those mistakes.

The truth is the Lions were pretty toothless. Of the so called Bok certainties I'd say Jantjies was decent apart from a few silly touches, his woeful tackling success and his conversion that never even reached the post.
Faf who I generally like was thoroughly outplayed by Aaron Smith
Kriel who lost the ball twice was outplayed at the breakdown by Pryor  who made 19 tackles to Kriel's 1 . I did see one  Kriel turnover...but even his long bust ended poorly failing to see his support runner. 
Whiteley was ordinary at best, this is no test player.

In truth this is the same team that looked good in the CC in part because the other teams lost their Boks and the Lions had no Boks to lose. Ackerman has done a brilliant job of coaching....they are a team. But as individuals I fear there isn't much test talent there.

 Mozart
Why do you specialize in nonsense all the time?  Nobody said make all the Lions Springboks.   The inventions you make are always near to absolute tripe - sad to say.
Kriel had a good game and so did Combrinck - the two players I always like in the Lions team - not being a great Jantjies supporter.   
  

 Jantjies was better than Kriel or Combrink today. He cleared his lines And offloaded well. He also made an excellent rip in the tackle. Combrink really should have scored that try and Kriel was thoroughly dominated by Pryor. He looked tired, these effort players eventually run out of juice.

 Your attacks on players is useless and counter-productive.  Start looking at individual players objectively - however, that is hardly to be expected.    
Combrinck carried the ball 7 timers for a meter gain of 53 meters and did not miss a tackle?  What more do you expect from a wing?
There was not much difference between Pryor and Kriel - Kriel was better in ball carries by some distance and Pryor did make a large number of tackles.
You did not note why that happened - the Lions had 71%  ball possession and played 70% of the game in Highlanders territory.  The Highlanders defended excellently and scored two tries - one through an intercept caused by Van der Walt and the other from a illegitimate line-out throw-in.
In a way it was indeed as Dave said a weird game and the result would have been different with the scrums being refereed correctly.   

.  I expect a wing to be able to touch a ball down when over the line, tackled by only one player.
. Jantjies never threw any interception
. Most of Kriel's  metres came in one run through open field which he ultimately botched.
. There was nothing wrong with the Highlanders scrum....just another excuse from the guy who said NZ teams can't scrum.

 Mozart
Did you actually watched the game?   I doubt it very, very much - otherwise you would have noted that the props scrummed inwards and if you do not know that is wrong - you are seriously advised to note that it is against the laws to scrum inwards. 
There were three players at least involved in the situation where Combrinck tried to touch down the ball after the first touch was a few centimeters short.  Your interpretation is definitely biased to say the least.   
I may be wrong - so who made the pass that was intercepted?  
So you find a reason for condemning Kriel because according to you he botched a ball carry - how exactly did he botched the issue after a major ball carry?      

. Combrink was held up solely by Fekitoa.

.The intercept pass was not thrown by Jantjies.

. Kriel had Skosan free on his right shoulder, had he offloaded a try was likely. I don't condemn him, these things happen. But he was well off his best.
. The scrums were fine. Malherbe and Koch in particular scrum inwards even more, as do many props....nothing rose to illegal scrumming.

 By the time Combrinck was rolling over and tried to score the try - there were two other players that kept him from scoring.   Fekitoa was not the only player involved.  
So inward scrumming is allowed on the false basis that many props scrum inwards.  Well I'll be damned - that really is funny.     
   

 Jantjies to my eye was par for the course, he did nothing special but he didn't cause any damage either. What stood out was how static the Lions were in attack and how on the contrary when  the Highlanders had the ball they made yardage.

 This idea that phase play is some kind of new panacea is a joke. You need to get penetration...the Lions were unable to do that. I saw nothing different in the way they played.

Fekitoa performance against the Lions, including try saving tackle.
Link to clip

 As the commentator said...'if he didn't down at the first time, it's not going to be a try'. He didn't because of the efforts of Fekitoa alone....the other players had zero impact on stopping the grounding and arrived after the ball was dead. Case closed yet again....this is getting damn tedious.

Agreed. Of the Highlanders players that arrived, #7 did nothing to hold it up, he just flopped over with his arm in no position to prevent a grounding. By the time #12 arrived and got a hand under it the Lions 15 was already assisting in an attempted grounding, with no success. That was all Fekitoa preventing the grounding. You can see his arm securely wrapped around the ball from below with his elbow pressing on the grass - that ball was going nowhere. 

ABs will need to replace Nonu & Conrad Smith. Fekitoa is a leading candidate for one place in the ABs for sure. If he continues to play like this he will be a joy to watch. No need to worry though, you have that hard running, hard tackling de Allende, right? He probably has solved his "tractoring" problem by now surely

Stirrer JW......I will rise above that. 

 Pakie
Balls - Fekitoa was the tackler and certainly was the main contributor to prevention of the try - the other two did asst him in the end.  
Mozart and you apparently think it was the first time ever when a try like that has been prevented - it never happened like that before.   That is also total BS - I have never seen this type of criticism of a player that otherwise did very well.
This is why criticism of both of  you must always be regarded as BS and prejudiced.  

 Fooling nobody Tokkie....that's three lies of yours, totally discredited,  still up on the Board.
1) Fekitoa had help in preventing the try
2) Malherbe wasn't penalized in the Stormers match.
3) Etzebeth never took the ball from Lomp in the lineouts.
All three incidents courteously explained to you, only to be met with accusations of lying.....totally refuted, only for you to invent new lies.

You are a disgrace old chap and very discredited. You are losing all sense of proportion. Perhaps you should take some time off and chill down.

Walk us through how #7 assisted him.  

 Mozart
Stop talking BS please.  This is getting over the limit and in all three cases you are misrepresenting facts as much as you are routinely misrepresenting the performance of players.
*   I said that when Fekitoa made the initial tackle the ball was short and Combrinck tried to roll over to touch down the ball again.  In preventing that there were three Highlanders players involved and that a major part of the hold up was to the credit of Fekitoa.   Even a blind man could see what happened in that case.  You went on the rampage against Combrinck is if that type of thing never happened in rugby before and that Combrinck is a useless wing.  
*   Second case is the Malherbe issue.   In the match against the Sharks the referee indicated that he was penalizing Van Rensburg and the commentators said it might as well be that he penalized Malherbe although he indicated it was on Van Rensburg side that the scrum went down.  Listen again to that comment and that is what actually happened.  You onviously misrepresented the issue again as is normal with you. 
*   After looking at the evidence provided by Pakie there seems to be ONE shortened line-out where De Jager did jump opposite Etzebeth and where Etzebeth slapped the ball back to the Stormers side.  You said it happened three times it was totally untrue and a misrepresentation of facts.   You carried on saying in another thread that De Jager three times went to the front of the line-outs to jump against Etzebeth because of something like cheek and was all three times disgraced.   Then you carried on about De Jager against the All Blacks and say that the AB's took balls off him in line-outs - but you obviously also misrepresented the facts there.  I think they did take one ball of De Jager - but they took three balls of Burger -Read - and one ball off Matfield when he came on as well.  Another total misrepresentation of facts.
One thing is clear - when anyone believe the prejudiced garbage you write on this site and the total misrepresentation of facts you use - he has to believe the moon is made of green cheese.  You call me a liar - but what are you?  
    

 To me, and the comentator, Combrink was held short of the line because of the solo Fekitoa tackle. 
The video shows Fekitoa rolled on his back and held Combrink so he could not get the ball down as they both rolled over the try line. 
Pryor (Landers 7) arrived to assist once Fekitoa and Combrink crossed the line (as did the Landers 12) not clear if they helped prevent Combrink from getting the ball down once he was across the line or not. 
What is clear is Combrink was short of the line in the first instance because of the Fekitoa tackle & that Combrink could not get the ball down once across the line - not clear if this was just because of Fekitoa or if the other two players assisted as there was then a mass of bodies.

 Agreed it was all down to Fekitoa.

 Brytie did the same with Mortlock (I think) back in the day.

 I see old Mozart's off on a tangent ... again!!!
Losing the plot seems to becoming a regular thing.
The poor dear!!
I guess we can't expect him to have lucid days everyday.

 

Moz you really do speak a load load of crap.....its just such predictable crap as well. 
For a start there was nothing in the game but for the 3 soft tries.....unless of course in your eyes, a grubber through landing perfectly in the hands of their winger is down to skill, not to mention the quickly taken line out with the Highlanders running the length of the field to score and lastly the intercept try.....but of course in your eyes the Highlanders were vastly superior......they beat the Chiefs at home the week before and suddenly cant live with the Highlanders a week later......what utter crap
As the stats prove, there was nothing in it
What exactly did Smith do that was better than Faf......I had Faf winning that dual in fact.
Kriel was far better than his opposite number who was nothing with ball in hand compared to Kriel, he made the only steal I record as well.
There was nothing in between those sides......but for the record.....the Lions were without 6 of their starters against the Chiefs in that game.....new frontrow, new centre pair and new fullback.
The Highlanders were not better than the Lions but for the intercept try
For the Lions, Combrink, Rohan Janse v/Rensburg, Mnisi, Jantjies, Faf, Mostert and Kriel were good.

The facts about Kriel vs Pryor
Pryor was so ineffective, I actually don't recall what he actually looks like
The stats say
Kriel ran the ball 9 times and gained 55m beating 1 defender - pretty much par for this fantastic player
Pryor on the otherhand ran it 3 times and gained 15m beating no defenders.....what was he doing all game?
He was defending with 19 tackles made, no turnovers made and one turnover conceded
Kriel only made 1 tackle which is hard to believe, conceded 2 turnovers and made one turnover
So much for Pryor dominating Kriel......what a load of utter rubbish
Moz get a grip for fuck sake.....your prejudice is pathetically childish and sooooooo fucking boring

 Dave
Fact is the Lions had possession 71% of the time - and territory 70% of the time.  That accounts for the high number of tackles credited to Pryor.   
Mozart was just plain impossible with his attacks on players of the Lions.  

 The Lions made 59 tackle attempts and Kriel made 1 and you ascribe it to the Lions  possession advantage......bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhahaha. Stupid is forever!

 Mozart
The stupid one are you in this case - sad to say.  In any game ball possession by one side at about 70% of the time will essentially result in the opposing team to having to make more tackles.    Why don't you provide the total number of tackles made by the Highlanders - the way you raise the number of tackles by the Lions indicate the severe problem you have in understanding the game of rugby.  

 Why don't you provide the % of Lions tackles made by Kriel vs the % of Chiefs tackles made by Pryor...go on Tokkie you big mouthed fool.

 Mozart
Tackles are made by players when the opposition carried the balls towards specific defenders,   Most of the time the limited ball possession of the Highlanders went wide.  Kriel is not the type of player like Matfield - who loafed around in the backline as extra center and consequntly made  fpr a change. a fairly high number of tackles.   The Highlanders rarely attacked in the channel where Kriel would make more tackles.
This is really weird - you moan about the deficient tackles made by Kriel - but never moaned about other loosies where attacks in the channel resulted in numerous  missed tackles.    Think back a bit to Alberts - whom you supported so ardently.
Before you query something like this think about the circumstances and the game played by the opposing team before you made a comment like that.   I know it is difficult - but at least try and think.     

Just provide the numbers, I never read your drivel anyway.  

 Then do something about the drivel you write on the site.  The real reason I responded to it was it was so thinking-deficient somebody had to put it into perspective.   

Pryor was a non entity I don't even recall what he looks like.
Kriel is in a different class. 
Cane is a good openside but Jaco made him look like a pretender the week before 

Pryor made 19 tackles, nine more than anybody else in the game and you can't recall him? As I have always said, you miss most of what happens, here we have clear proof.
Kriel may have had some good games, the  Highlanders wasn't one of them.