The Lions have their tails up after a magnificent last-16 victory over French giants Racing 92 and Jaque Fourie says they will be going for the win in the Challenge Cup quarter-final against Glasgow Warriors. DYLAN JACK reports.
Over the weekend, the Lions claimed one of the most famous wins in the franchise’s history when they thrashed Parisian outfit Racing 92 in a 51-28 victory to progress to the Challenge Cup quarter-finals for the first time.
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Making the win even more impressive was that the Johannesburg side lost influential flank Emmanuel Tshituka to an early red card, yet the hosts still managed to score seven tries and rank up a half-century of points.
The Lions will travel to Glasgow this week for their quarter-final against an in-form Warriors side that hammered the Dragons 73-33 in their playoff.
The last time the two teams faced each was in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship in February, when the Lions claimed a morale-boosting 35-24 win that prompted the turnaround in their season.
“That helped us in a positive way,” defence coach Jaque Fourie said. “We rallied together and decided to start performing. The week before we played Glasgow we decided to take off the shackles and we had nothing to lose.
“It was a tough game against Racing, so the first thing is to get the payers physically ready for Glasgow.
“We aren’t going there just to compete, we want to win. We have two games left in the URC and we want to finish on a high. So our focus is to win against Glasgow.”
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Glasgow are coached by the wily Franco Smith and Fourie said he expects the former Springbok to have a few tricks up the sleeve.
“We will keep what we have been doing, we just want to do it better. We know Franco will come with trick plays. We need the discipline to stay in our structure.
“If we stay in our structure and keep our discipline, if we force turnovers, they will rethink their strategy and that will play into our hands. But we need to stop them and force errors, then we will be in for a shout.”
On Tuesday it was confirmed that Tshituka was handed a three-match ban and miss the quarter-final, but with veteran Jaco Kriel fit again, Fourie was confident the Lions can sustain the blow.
“Manu has been playing well. To lose a guy like that is massive. Jaco is coming along quite well, with Manu banned there is an opportunity, he has been training well so is looking good for the weekend.”
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