Cardiff’s anticipate an away win this season continued as they fell to a irritating defeat to the Lions in Johannesburg.
Almost 4 months for the reason that Blue and Blacks first arrived in South Africa, their first piece of on-field motion within the southern hemisphere was one marred by a desperately gradual begin.
Simply after the tip of the primary quarter, Cardiff trailed 24-6.
And whereas they did get again into the sport because of tries from Aled Summerhill and James Botham, there will be a way of frustration that they could not full the comeback towards a Lions facet that not often threatened to land a punch past these early scores.
The house facet took simply over a minute to attain. Scrum-half Morne van den Berg recognizing some disorganisation across the Cardiff ruck defence to snipe over after Jordan Hendrikse’s monstrous 50:22 had given them prime area place.
The 2 sides exchanged penalties, with two from Jarrod Evans, making his one hundredth look for the membership, both facet of Hendrikse’s effort from the tee making it 10-6 after 12 minutes.
Nonetheless from there, two quickfire tries from winger Edwill van der Merwe pushed the house facet out to a snug lead.
His first got here from affected person red-zone strain after Cardiff didn’t regather a kick-off, with the winger ultimately making the most of the area afforded to him out huge for a walkover.
His second got here because the Cardiff defence was reduce aside by a deft offload from flanker Vincent Tshituka, with centre Wandisile Simelane drawing the ultimate man to place van der Merwe away.
Cardiff, to their credit score, responded nicely as they lastly snapped into gear.
Will Boyde appeared to have scored from a driving maul shortly afterwards, just for TMO Ben Whitehouse to tug it again for an infringement.
Nonetheless, they acquired their reward as Summerhill made use of an overlap shortly after the half-hour mark to crash over for Cardiff’s opening strive.
The hole was decreased additional as Botham crossed 4 minutes after the restart following some affected person build-up play within the Lions’ 22.
A few penalties from Hendrikse gave the Lions respiration room, however the momentum nonetheless felt prefer it was with Cardiff as they continued to look threatening when in a position to string phases collectively.
Nonetheless, a yellow card for Kristian Dacey after he unintentionally caught the top of a Lions participant who popped up in entrance of him on the final second because the hooker was attempting to filter a ruck, curbed a Cardiff assault and finally sealed their destiny.
From there, the Blue and Blacks struggled to create clearcut probabilities within the ultimate quarter and, with the clock pink, the Lions sealed their bonus level as Tshituka crossed regardless of seeming to lose possession of the ball whereas grounding.
Lions: Quan Horn; Stean Pienaar, Wandisile Simelane, Burger Odendaal, Edwill van der Merwe; Jordan Hendrikse, Morne van den Berg; Sti Sithole, Jaco Visagie, Carlu Sadie, Ruben Schoeman, Reinhard Nothnagel, Jaco Kriel (capt), Vincent Tshituka, Francke Horn.
Replacements: PJ Botha, JP Smith, Ruan Dreyer, Ruan Venter, Emmanuel Tshituka, Nico Steyn, Manuel Rass, Tiaan Swanepoel.
Cardiff Rugby: Matthew Morgan; Owen Lane, Rey Lee-Lo, Ben Thomas, Aled Summerhill; Jarrod Evans, Lloyd Williams; Corey Domachowski, Kirby Myhill, Dmitri Arhip, Josh Turnbull (capt), Matthew Screech, Shane Lewis-Hughes, Will Boyde, James Botham
Replacements: Kristian Dacey, Brad Thyer, Will Davies-King, Rory Thornton, Ellis Jenkins, Jamie Hill, Max Llewellyn, Hallam Amos
Referee: Chris Busby (IRFU)
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