Durban — Jacque Fourie is a Springbok legend for his famous attacking play, which included a try to win the series against the 2009 British and Irish Lions, and now he is creating more magic as defence coach of the local Lions.
The United Rugby Championship version of the Lions won their third match in a row at the weekend when they thumped the Ospreys and much of their excellent finishing in scoring seven tries was down to their exceptional defence.
If that sounds Irish, here is the explanation from Lions captain Burger Odendaal, who was the Man of the Match in his team’s 45-15 victory over the Welsh team.
“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,” Odendaal said. “Jacque 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…”
All of the Lions players have become scavengers at the breakdown and observers of the game would have seen the Lions patiently allowing the Ospreys their phases before suddenly striking at the breakdown, turning the ball over and then scooting it out to the wings where the Lions knew they would have space against the tiring Ospreys.
“And backing that up was our much-improved support play,” said 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 this weekend, fresh from their sinking of the Sharks, and the Scots will be even stronger with more of their international players included in their team this week.
“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 Schoemann 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.”
IOL Sport