Lions Coach Johan Ackerman. Picture: GALLO IMAGES
Lions Coach Johan Ackerman. Picture: GALLO IMAGES

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AHEAD of a potentially mouth-watering clash against the Highlanders on Saturday, we tallied five reasons why the Lions are suddenly the most talked about team in South Africa:

• Slim management team: The fashionable thing in SA, especially since Heyneke Meyer’s tenure with the Springboks, is having a bloated management team with a coach for almost everything: a kicking coach, a breakdown coach, a defence coach, a squad of technical analysts, the head coach, his two assistants, a scrum coach and one to wipe the snot from the players’ noses.

The Lions have an old school management team: head coach Johan Ackermann coaches the forwards, Swys de Bruin manages the backs and JP Ferreira is in charge of kicking and defence — end of story.

• Two playmakers: Other South African teams like having their first centres built like loose-forwards who could be lineout options so they can set up phases. The Lions, however, see the No12 as Elton Jantjies’s co-pilot, the second playmaker in the equation. This is why Ackermann loves having Howard Mnisi to open the game up when matters are tense or to run their opponent ragged in the final quarter. The other first centre, Harold Vorster, may be a battering ram, but he has an eye for an offload in contact.

• Regular front row rotation: Other South African teams only tinker with a satisfactorily functioning front row when it gets slaughtered by opponents. Ackermann, however, is unafraid to change his props and hookers weekly to keep them fresh and hungry.

• They back their playing style: Everyone who saw what happened to Heyneke Meyer’s Bulls team in the 2002 Super 12 season will know that it is not easy changing the way South African teams traditionally play. The Lions, whether things work out for them one week and do not the next, never abandon their style of play.

• One man calls the shots: This again speaks to a streamlined management set-up. Ackermann calls all the shots and there is no director of rugby breathing down his neck about this or that, or whatever the suits want to meddle in. When he tells the players that they will win matches, they believe him.