The Lions were tough biltong today. With incredible phase play and dominance at the breakdown they kept the ball all game. They only made their second phase mistake at minute 75 as Jean ripped out the ball. After how many phases?
By contrast the Stormers found every possible way to concede the ball. Isolated runners kept being turned over by Minnie et al. Duvenage kicked the ball out directly. Duvenage throws a looped intercept pass near the Lions tryline. That hopelessly inexperienced young hooker throws it in skew twice. Liebenburg concedes yet another penalty failing to retreat. Koster fumbles a simple kickoff. Peterson up and unders aimlessly. Kolisi doesn't even contest Minnie as he closes in on the down ball.
The Stormers ended with a massive penalty deficit. And even where they had an advantage in the scrums, they were negated by early hits. Finally Glen Jackson, lauded by Bobby, but to me only just competent....called it in the last 10 minutes. But those penalties just kept driving them back.
This will require a lot of analysis by the Newlands brains trust. To me Koster looked too flimsy to really impact things. Vermeulen was strangely absent and Kolisi is energetic but weak on the ground. The Bools will be even harder to contain in the ground game.
On the positive side de Jongh and Jean did brilliantly defensively. Aplon, size protestations aside, put his man in touch with conviction. Habana is rounding into form.
In the pack Etzebeth continues a huge work rate and Kitshoff has that second shove power that we haven't seen in a while from a SA loosehead. Habana's try came from his scrummaging.
But mostly well done Lions. A narrow but massive effort from them. What a shame either of the Lions or Cheetahs are history.
