A last gasp penalty kick in the dying seconds won a thrilling Rainbow Cup encounter for the DHL Stormers at Emirates Airline Park on Saturday as the Emirates Lions had to concede victory by 39-37.

It was a thrilling high-scoring encounter and one in which a single kick stole it from the home-side in the end.

The Lions were good at converting their opportunities into points. This started in the 12th minute when Wandisile Simelane read the situation and snapped up a loose ball on the Stormers goal-line to score the first of five tries.

These were followed by tries to MJ Pelser and EW Viljoen in the first half which helped the Lions to a slender 22-15 lead at half-time.

Pelser had a busy day, not only in scoring a sterling try which was started by André Warner, but he was a thorn in the Stormers flesh all-round.

The Lions’ forwards showed up on the day and stood solid, even against the highly rated front-row of the visitors come scrum time while new flyhalf Jordan Hendrikse showed that he was good enough and thus old enough for rugby at this level. He showed calmness in his decision-making and aiming at goal.

Warner was another who showed patience on the ball and read the game extremely well. This lead to more than one try for his side while his defense was also outstanding.

Like captain Burger Odendaal said afterwards: “Our forwards stepped up today and thanks to that, we scored some great tries. Just sorry we couldn’t pull off the win.”

Next week the Lions host the Vodacom Bulls.

Scorers: Tries: Wandisile Simelane, MJ Pelser, EW Viljoen, Andre Warner, Rabz Maxwane. Conversions: Jordan Hendrikse (3). Penalties: Hendrikse (2).