The Emirates Lions went down 34-10 in a slippery, hard-fought battle against the Vodacom Bulls in Round 11 of the Vodacom United Rugby Championship at Emirates Airline Park this past Saturday.

Summarizing his team’s performance, head coach Ivan van Rooyen felt his team had dominance when it came to scrum time but had a challenging time converting that pressure into points.

“I felt our scrum and to a certain extent our mauls were pretty good but unfortunately we couldn’t capitalize on that dominance. We’ll have a look at that again and show up better when we head to Loftus.”

Commenting on his side’s defence, vice-captain Jaco Kriel believed more intent was required by his troops on this key aspect of the game.

“Defence is something we spoke about quite a bit leading up the Bulls game more specifically our transition from defence to attack. So for us not to execute on that was quite disappointing. Defence structures will only take you that far… the rest is attitude.”

The former Springbok star encouraged his team mates to take more responsibility and more importantly increase the overall intent.

“Every single one of us will have to take a hard look at ourselves heading into next week. The positive of it all however is that it can be rectified,” he concluded.