Something has to change at the top if Lions are to shed losers tag

COMMENT

Lions supporters’ spirits must have sunk when Johan Ackermann returned to South Africa from England — not to save their team, but to take over from Jake White at the Bulls.

Similarly, Swys de Bruin — Ackermann’s sidekick during the Lions’ heyday in Super Rugby — emerged from coaching isolation to lead the Springbok Women to World Cup success.

Both these coaches are Lions legends, and either would be appreciated at Ellis Park right now.

The Lions, in short, need a saviour. Another Currie Cup season ended in disappointment, despite fielding a full-strength squad, while the United Rugby Championship is off to a dismal start with three consecutive losses.

They already look unlikely to make the Top 8, having never qualified for the play-offs since South Africa joined the URC in 2021. But it is not just that they are losing; it is the manner in which the defeats are happening.

At the weekend, in the loss to Benetton, the players at times looked listless and bereft of ideas. There are top-quality players in this Lions team who are shadows of their former selves. They almost look disinterested.

The loss in Treviso was the fourth in a row for the Lions, if you include the Currie Cup final defeat. All of those games followed a similar pattern of basic errors, some of which would make schoolboys blush — from failing to win their own line-outs in the opposition 22 to failing to exit safely from their own 22, with plenty more in between.

And here is the thing — we have seen this last year, and the year before, and the year before that. In fact, going back to 2019, when the post-De Bruin era began.

Why are the Lions not improving?

Why do we hear the same hollow excuses year after year — “We shot ourselves in the foot”; “We were our own worst enemies”?

Why are the Lions continuing to shoot themselves in the foot?

It must be getting painfully frustrating.

It cannot be easy for the coaches to sit in press conferences every week and say the same things, season after season.

But why does it feel like an eternal Groundhog Day for the Lions?

Is it the players or the coaching staff at fault, or a bit of both?

Have the coaches lost the change room?

Head coach Ivan van Rooyen is a nice guy, but he is not getting the best out of the players.

Why do they make the same mistakes every week?

Surely, the players are tired of being South African rugby’s “nearly men” — almost winning games but failing most of the time.

We understand the Lions don’t have the financial resources of other South African franchises, meaning they cannot always retain their best players.

That said, there were telling words from Edwill van der Merwe when he explained his move to the Sharks. The Springbok wing said it was “a progression for my career” and added, “one of the big reasons I chose the Sharks is because of the number of Springboks they have and because they will be competing for trophies. I want to be part of a winning team.”

Van der Merwe might feel he has jumped out of the frying pan into the fire right now, but the point remains. He follows in the footsteps of other former Lions — Vincent and Manu Tshituka, and Ruan Dreyer.

I do not know if Van Rooyen is the reason the Lions are losing, but the buck stops with him. Sometimes there simply has to be a shake-up to get a team back on track.

We often see it in professional football in Europe: a team has a losing run, the manager is sacked, a new manager arrives, and the same players start winning. It is about changing the chemistry, wiping the slate clean, and starting again.

If nothing changes at the Lions, nothing will change. This time next year, I will be writing the same thing in my own Groundhog Day. Heaven forbid.