They ran in eight tries, scored 55 points and bagged a bonus point, but coach Johan Ackermann was still not satisfied with his team’s performance on Saturday.
The Lions, after two rounds of this year’s Super Rugby competition, sit on top of their conference and look to be well on the way to repeating last year’s effort which saw they finish in the final of the competition.
They followed up a scratchy first round win against the Cheetahs with a much-improved, if not wholly convincing, performance against the Waratahs at Ellis Park on Saturday.
Rohan Janse van Rensburg, with two tries, was the big star, but he was closely followed by Ross Cronje, Warren Whiteley, Ruan Ackermann, Andries Ferreira and Robbie Coetzee, who all delivered quality outings.
The major concern though ahead of this week’s trip to Buenos Aires for a date with the Jaguares is the Lions’ defence.
They let in five soft tries against the Tahs, three of them almost immediately after the Lions had scored and the home team had failed to get out of their own half from the restart.
“We’re happy with the win, we got the points on the board, and the bonus point is exactly that, a bonus ... but we still feel this win is not something to get excited about,” lamented Ackermann.
“Credit to the players; they upped the performance (from week one), but we can’t get over-excited. There is a lot to work on, especially the defence.
"For every try we scored, we gave them one ... and we allowed them to stay in touch. We just weren’t able to put them away and that was frustrating.
“The thing is we work so hard to score tries, but we need to work equally hard when we don’t have the ball. We have to focus better on that aspect of our game ... it’s just not acceptable to let the opposition in so easily.”
Ackermann, though, was satisfied with his team’s set-pieces and their driving maul - the latter something the Lions haven’t established in their attack-from-all-parts-game in the last two years.
On Saturday, three times they kicked penalties into touch and set up a line-out, and then scored from the driving maul.
“We got reward from it, so it was satisfying. We know that at 3pm on the Highveld that sort of thing can be energy-sapping for a team to defend, so it was a double win for us, we scored tries and we forced the Tahs to defend.”
The driving maul is no doubt something the Lions will try to employ again this weekend in Buenos Aires against the Jaguares.
Captain Whiteley was also hesitant to get too excited with the performance.
“The intensity we played with was pleasing and we worked hard off the ball. Also, the set-pieces were good and we were able to put them under pressure, but to let in five tries ... that was too easy for them, especially after we’d done such good work to score our tries.”
In the corresponding fixture last season against the Jaguares, a second-string Lions side lost 34-22.