The Lions traveled to Essen on May 3rd and wanted a win to put the club in a safe place for the playoffs. The good weather conditions and the good preparation by coach James gave the Lions a lot of confidence. So with kick-off at 2pm, a beautiful afternoon of rugby was underway.
\nThe first half of the game was one-sided, with the Lions clearly dominating all aspects of the game and executing their game plan. Excellent communication and switching between strong and accurate forwards and clear dominance in the rucks combined with sharp backs set-pieces allowed Pablo to score the first try of the game. Nevertheless, the Lions did not sit back and relax, but continued to push forward and put the Essen defense under pressure. Bonn were rewarded with a few more tries and increased the score to 14:3. Although Rugby Club Essen were visibly under pressure, they managed to reduce the deficit to four points with an increased try. The Lions were not to be discouraged so easily, however, and Pablo scored another try, which was increased by our captain and final player Johannes to establish a new 11-point lead at half-time.
\nThe tide was to turn in the second half, however. The Lions came back onto the court with an 11-point lead and a positive attitude, but Essen had set their sights high for the second half. Just a few minutes after the restart, the home side scored a try and reduced the score to just six points. <\/p>\n
While Essen gathered more and more momentum and increased the pressure on Bonn’s defense, the visiting team struggled with injuries and early substitutions. Under increasing pressure from Essen, the Lions were no longer able to maintain the pace of their fantastic first half. The home team scored two more tries and turned the score to 29-21 in Essen’s favor.
\nAlthough the score was not in our favor, the Lions continued to fight, such as with the fantastic defensive tackles by Johannes, who prevented two more tries. Unfortunately, a final mistake allowed Essen to score a last penalty kick, which they successfully converted, meaning Bonn did not get any more bonus points. The battle for the play-off places continues and the next chance to secure a place will be against SG Rheinland on May 17.
\nA big thank you to Rugby Club Essen for the fun and hospitality this weekend at their ground. We also wish all injured Lions a speedy and speedy recovery!<\/p>\n
Text: Vincent Martinet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bitter defeat after a strong start The Lions traveled to Essen on May 3rd and wanted a win to put the club in a safe place for the playoffs. The good weather conditions and the good preparation by coach James gave the Lions a lot of confidence. So with kick-off at 2pm, a beautiful afternoon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-match-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5888,"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886\/revisions\/5888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rcbrs.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}