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Twenty-one-year-old replacement fly half Gianni Lombard was the unlikely hero for the Lions when he nailed a scrum penalty after the final hooter had gone to secure an unexpected Super Rugby victory for the hosts over the visiting Melbourne Rebels at Ellis Park yesterday.
The hosts had trailed 33-5 not long after half-time when a combination of coach Swys de Bruin’s substitutions, a 47th minute sin-binning of Rebels centre Billy Meakes, and the visitors falling apart in the last half an hour put them on the path for an epic comeback.
Meakes’ 10 minutes off, for blatant and repeated infringements by the visitors (they conceded 20 tries to one in the match), yielded no less than three converted tries by Marnus Schoeman, replacements Andries Coetzee and Lionel Mapoe.
The latter’s score was the result of visiting fly half Quade Cooper being beaten to dotting the ball down after lazily hoping a kick ahead would make it over the dead ball line – a sign of just how far the Rebels had unravelled.
A Courtnall Skosan try from a trademark Malcolm Marx try deep inside his half brought the scores level, and Lombard did the rest by holding his nerve to nail the last-minute penalty to secure a win that helped the loose and messy Lions to second place in the South African Conference.
While they may have only had about 25% possession in the first 10 minutes, the visitors dominated the remainder of the first half like a team concerned that travel fatigue and altitude might catch up with them later in the game.
Having been caught out by a neat one-two short line-out between hooker Marx and prop Dylan Smith, which ended up with the former scoring in the fifth minute, the Rebels proceeded to take the hosts to school in every area of the game except the scrums.
As competent as Dave Wessels’ men were, they were given a massive leg up by the callow Lions, who were bedevilled by misfiring in three key areas.
Due to having no options other than Marvin Orie and Stephan Lewies in the line-out, the Lions struggled in that area and couldn’t set up mauls, let alone rolling ones; they insisted on trying to run the ball out by way of exits despite the fact that, with the exception of Marx, none of their forwards could get go-forward ball; and their defence was once again about as stiff as wet toast.
The struggle to exit their territory led to the visitors’ opening try by winger Reece Hodge, after a looping interplay by halfbacks Cooper and Will Genia bunched up the defence, while a failure to deal with the flat and aggressive Rebels defence saw them concede a 90m turnover try.
Fly half Elton Jantjies coughed up an intercept try to inside Meakes, while number eight Isi Naisarani capped off a hard-driving day with a powerful score from close range to have the visitors on a bonus points try just 24 minutes into the game.
Outside centre Tom English, who had shelled what would have been the Rebels’ fifth try late in the first half, got on the board immediately after half-time.
Where the expectation was that the Lions were done for, few reckoned with the sequence of events that would follow from there. – City Press correspondent
