Lions: Whiteley demands consistency

Lions captain Warren Whiteley has earmarked 'consistency' and 'being clinical' as two of the missing elements in his team's campaign this season.

Speaking to rugby365, ahead of their encounter with the Rebels in Melbourne on Friday, Whiteley said they will require a solid 80-minute performance if their are to turn their stuttering season around.

With just one win, against the Blues in Albany a fortnight ago, from five starts, the men from Johannesburg are hovering well outside the top 10 on the standings.

And they are up against a Rebels outfit that play well together as a team and are a good unit.

"They [the Rebels] work hard and are prepared to take the ball through multiple phases," Whiteley said.

"They are a team that is willing to fight to the end, so we will need a solid 80-minute effort.

"It will be a tough game, but we had a good week in terms of training and are looking forward to the challenge."

The only game the Lions were completely outclassed was last week's 6-34 loss to the Crusaders. In the other matches that they lost - the Hurricanes, Sharks and Stormers - they were in the contest for most of the game.

In fact all that prevented the Lions from an upset win over the Stormers was a handling error - with Howard Mnisi having lost the ball over the line - in a game that saw the Lions go down 19-22.

"We have to be more clinical," Whiteley told rugby365, when asked how they will eliminate those costly errors.

"We have created so many opportunities and have put teams under pressure, but we have failed to convert those [opportunities] into points."

He said they have worked hard on eliminating those costly errors and have also put a lot of work into their set pieces .

The scrums, which was a nightmare last week and resulted in Springbok prop Julian Redelinghuys  being yellow-carded for repeated infringements in the scrums.

While many critics, including respected former referee Jonathan Kaplan, have questioned the legitimacy of All Black Wyatt Crockett's tactics, the Lions have opted to look at themselves rather external factors for their demise in the set pieces.

"We all know how important the set pieces are and the Crusaders put us under a lot of pressure," he said, adding: "We know it is an area of our game that needs improvement.

"We've had games where we scrummed well and, like last week against the Crusaders, where we were not very good.

"It is all about consistency.

"We know we are good enough to compete at this level, it is just the consistency that is lacking."

He said that after the high of the victory over the Blues in Albany - a first-ever win abroad for many of the Lions' youngsters - to last week's demolition at the hands of the Crusaders there were some harsh lessons learnt.

"They [the Crusaders] had a good number of seasoned players on the field and you could see how calm they remained calm.

"In other games, like the Hurricanes and Stormers, we also wasted chances.

"So the overriding message is that we have to be more clinical."

By Jan de Koning

@rugby365com