Durban - Stormers coach John Dobson borrowed from William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well to describe his team’s comeback victory over the Lions in the URC on Saturday, but for his Lions counterpart Ivan van Rooyen, it was more Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
The Lions appeared to be roaring to a famous win over the champions after dominating the collisions and tackling like demons for much of the game, while the Stormers’ line-out creaked because of the errant throwing of Joseph Dweba, only for the Cape Town side to score 21 unanswered points in the last quarter.
The Stormers’ replacements certainly made a difference, but the Lions should still have closed out the game.
“It was yin and yang,” said Van Rooyen.
“It was a complete turnaround. I felt we had control after the first 40 (minutes) and we lost that control in the second 40.
“If your line-out doesn’t function, you can’t put pressure on them,” he said of the turnaround in the line-out fortunes in the second half.
“You end up playing on the wrong side of the field and you are doing all the defending. That combination tends to not work out too well ... ”
When asked if the second-half collapse was because of inexperience, Van Rooyen said: “The easy answer would be ‘yes’.
“However, I think it’s probably more about execution. Sometimes you imagine the pressure to be more than it really is.”
The Lions had played well against Ulster, but last week hit an unexpected hiatus when Glasgow Warriors pulled out of their fixture at Ellis Park because of illness, and Van Rooyen was unsure of the relevance of the sudden break.
“You can always say, ‘yes, it negatively affected you because you didn’t play’,”
Van Rooyen said.
“We felt we had an exceptional preparation week for Glasgow, so not playing that game at home after that bit of momentum could have played a role.
“The thing is, we still felt that we had prepared well for the Stormers.
“I can’t sit here and say what would have happened if we played that Glasgow game.
“The bottom line is that from the beginning, we knew there was a sevengame block and that the next block will be 10 games.
“We will take a week off, regroup, and get ready to play six away games out of 10 (after the international break).”
The Lions’ next game is away to the Dragons in Wales on November 27.