Lions vs Stormers review:

This game was played by two very different teams with two very different strategies. The Lions wanted to speed the game up from the beginning and bring the altitude into play and the Stormers wanted to slow the game down and make their energy last longer. At the end of the day the Stormers came away with a win scoring a try after the siren had gone to clinch the victory.

Lions:

The Lions looked very dangerous when they sped the game up and ran at the defense of the Stormers. The one thing that did not work is that sometimes they tried to much to speed the game up and then they made stupid mistakes to give the ball back to the Stormers. They will also have to sharpen up their game and their kicks from 9. If they want to use him to kick the ball in their exit plays he will have to work on his kicks they were very inconsistent and when he kicked the ball from outside the 22 it sometimes went out on the full and it gave the Stormers an attacking line-out just outside the 22 of the Lions. They were also good in defense for most of the game with their very fast defensive line shooting up and tackling the big runners of the Stormers behind the game line to slow down their attack.

Stormers:

The Stormers wanted to slow the ball down constantly and most of the time they were able to control the speed of the game which is why they were able to dominate most of the game as well. The altitude did however get to them and the last ten minutes the Lions ran circles around them. It was at that time when they started conceding tries and even trailed just before the game ended. They had a plan to counter the fast playing Lions and that was to not compete at the breakdowns as soon as the tackle was made they got out of the breakdown and set up their defensive line. That helped because they were able to have at least 14 defenders on their feet at all times which made it easier for the men out wide to defend and preserve energy. When they finally in the last few moments of the game were able to play wide themselves they took the Lions by surprise and scored the game winning try.

MVP:

Elton Jantjies: Although he did not end up on the winning side he showed that he is a better 10 at the moment than Damian Willemse and I believe still the best number 10 behind Pollard.