Swys irritated with tame Lions

De Bruin wasn’t a happy man after the 30-12 defeat – the first time in four years that a South African franchise has outplayed them on their home turf and the first victory in seven years for the Bulls across the Jukskei.

And to make matters worse, the normally slick and fluid Lions machine stuttered and were hardly in the game, looking a lot tamer than the side that surged to three consecutive Vodacom Super Rugby finals.

De Bruin made no excuses, but didn’t hide the fact the was far from happy with his charges.

“No excuses, we were outplayed by a much better team on the day and we will have to go work very hard to rectify our mistakes, but congratulations to them, they outplayed us. They taught us a rugby lesson.

“Look, we will have to go analyse. We didn’t have the ball for the first 24 minutes. We just never saw the ball. We need ball to play, we are that type of team. The word they use is suffocate, we battled in the air – I will have to go count, all the aerial kicks, I don’t think we caught one. So no one to blame – it starts with me, and I will take it from there,” De Bruin said.

And while the team was missing inspirational captain Warren Whiteley they would not use it as an excuse either.

“No excuses, we have a squad system. It doesn’t matter that (Rhyno) Herbst and those guys have their first cap, and they play against Duane and those boys. It is Super Rugby and we have to man up and we didn’t man up.”

There was a brief flutter in the second half when the Lions got their hands on the ball and scored two tries, and it seemed as if they were about to make a comeback, but it was snuffed out by the boot of Handre Pollard, who kicked 20 points on the day.

“We’ve been behind before, you guys know it, and we did come back. I thought at stages here we go, but we had some terrible knocks. Just when I thought this is the time to come back, so all will be forgotten and we just have to finish.

“Our discipline was nowhere, we kick through and we just have to trap the guy, we are three guys on one and we go and make a high tackle and we relieve all the pressure. If you give silly penalties away then you are not going to win games.”

De Bruin said there would be some soul-searching in the team ranks this week to rectify it before they face the Jaguares, and this simply wasn’t good enough.

“It starts with me, we must be man enough to rectiy this and we can’t be happy whatsoever. Because it is sport, I will always back the guys – win or lose. We aren’t playing to win or lose, we are playing to score tries. We scored two tries and it was not enough. They scored two tries, and what was the difference? The kicks. When they put it down they kicked it over. It’s disappointing stuff.”

The Lions will name their team for the Jaguares on Thursday