Rampant Western Province crush Lions at Newlands

A smothering defensive effort, coupled with intelligent decision-making and clinical execution by Western Province, produced a stunning result as they thumped the Golden Lions 41-3.

The visitors had over 70 per cent possession, made twice as many passes and nearly three times as many ball carries, but leaked six tries in the face of the ferocious defensive onslaught from the home team.

WP were asked to make almost 200 tackles, and they completed 95% of them, which was the foundation of this extraordinary example of how defence wins games without compromising the ability to score tries.

The hosts scored six in total, and at least two of them could be candidates for try of the year.

But it was their hunger to tackle and realign for more defensive work that stood out over some scintillating tries.

Often there were two WP players tackling a ball carrier. The working over Bok centre Rohan Janse van Rensburg received epitomised WP’s thirst for tackling.

Van Rensburg was hit by two players every time, one high and one low, to ensure that he became a non-entity in the match. By the end the burly centre shovelled the ball on instead of running into a wall again.

From numerous turnovers and pressure WP fashioned three first half tries – two to centre Huw Jones and another for debutant flank Cobus Wiese – that would normally be described as against the run of play.

Only that despite not having much ball, WP looked comfortable and held a deserved advantage at the break because of the way they thrived without the ball.

Jones’ first try came when he charged down Anthony Volminck’s attempted clearance kick on the first occasion WP were inside the Lions’ 22-mete area.

The ball somehow stuck in the Scotland centre’s hands and he cantered over with the defence completely wrong-footed.

Wiese’s try had its genesis in quickly tapped free kick by scrumhalf Jano Vermaak who then fed centre EW Viljoen, who in turn looked for support on the inside before Wiese picked up a pass off his ankles at full speed to score.

Jones’ second started deep inside the WP half when wing Dillyn Leyds carved a hole through the defence and made 80 metres to crush Lions spirits a minute before halftime.

The unfortunate Volminck earned a yellow card after the score for a high tackle on Leyds as he made the scoring pass to Jones.

While he was off in the opening 10 minutes of the second half, WP added two more tries to kill what little life was left in the match as a contest.

Wig Seabelo Senatla used his pace to latch on to a well-weighted and directed grubber by Viljoen and almost from the restart veteran scrumhalf Jano Vermaak finished off another deep break.

WP then spent most of the rest of the half defending before fittingly finishing the match with a second try by Senatla, which started from a turnover and was constructed by Leyds.

Scorers:

Western Province

Tries: Huw Jones (2), Cobus Wiese, Seabelo Senatla (2), Jano Vermaak

Conversions: SP Marais, Damian Willemse (2)

Penalty: Willemse.

Golden Lions

Penalty: Jaco van der Walt.

 - TimesLIVE