Skipper Burger Odendaal has hailed the influence of assistant coaches Jaque Fourie and Ricardo Loubscher in helping to rectify the Lions’ defence and attack.
The Lions beat the Ospreys 45-15 on Friday to make it three wins in as many matches in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship for the Joburg outfit, scoring 13 tries and conceding seven. Prior to their recent good run of form, the Lions had lost five consecutive games.
Odendaal, who was named Man of the Match after Friday’s win, believes the Lions couldn’t have turned things around without a wake-up call from ex-Springboks Fourie and Loubscher.
“On defence, you don’t want to defend for 15 to 20 phases. You want to force the turnover and we worked hard on that in our defence training,” the Lions captain said.
“Jaque wanted to force turnovers and then attack from it, and that is exactly what we did – after they had had a number of phases going, you would have seen our players going in for the turnover.”
“And backing that up was our much-improved support play,” added Odendaal. “As our attack coach, Ricardo Loubscher said we were ‘having a cappuccino at the back’ when one of us was attacking … we have changed that and all of us are now running support lines to try and keep the ball alive.”
The Lions host Edinburgh in the URC on Saturday at Ellis Park, with a few familiar faces among the visitors’ ranks, notably former Lions utility back Jaco van der Walt and ex-Vodacom Bulls prop Pierre Schoeman.
“There is a reason why Edinburgh are high on the log,” Odendaal said. “They have a good kicking and attacking game. This week we will see the likes of Pierre Schoeman and Jaco van der Walt coming back from Six Nations duty.
“Jaco is a former Lion and he knows the stadium and the players well, so they will have had a good briefing of what to expect.”
