Edinburgh suffer heavy loss away at Lions

With the game done and dusted by half-time, Edinburgh did put up more of a fight in the second half but the Lions still managed to outscore them in the second 40 minutes. Ewan Ashman got the visitors on the scoreboard at the back of a driving maul but it was another Lions try that really got fans out of their seat. They thought they'd scored another when Smith acrobatically flicked a pass inside but the ball was already out.

Not to worry, as they scored from the next play with Smith's cross-field kick perfectly picking out Angelo Davids, who scored with a somersault flourish. The sides continued to trade tries until the end. Freddy Douglas scored after a Charlie Shiel snipe and Davids got a second when he somehow got on to a booming Mills grubber kick that sat up perfectly for the Lions winger.

Matt Currie hit back for Edinburgh, skipping out of one tackle in midfield and sprinting over to give the visitors some hope of a bonus-point try. However, it wouldn't come as the Lions pinned them back and scored their eighth through Hassiem Pead, the substitute scrum-half who spotted a gap next to a ruck and wiggled through. While this is an undoubtedly tough fixture, hosted in the gloried Ellis Park Stadium, the humiliating defeat seems to reflect Edinburgh's current trajectory.

Eighteen months on from their last game in Johannesburg, in which Edinburgh were torn apart in defence, languid in attack and utterly lacking in leadership, they produced an almost identical performance. Lions : Q Horn, A Davids, Van Wyk, Mills, Cronje; Smith, Van den Berg; Kotze, Botha, Ntlabakanye, Venter, Landsberg, Mahashe, Hlekani, F Horn (c) Replacements : Marais, E Davids, RF Schoeman, Nothnagel, Qoma, Du Plessis, Pead, Kriel Edinburgh : Paterson, Brown, M Currie, Tuipulotu, Satala; Thompson, Vellacott; Venter, Richardson, Rae, Sykes, Young, Muncaster, Douglas, Bradbury (c) Replacements : Ashman, Whitcombe, Hill, Hunter-Hill, McConnell, Shiel, Scott, O'Conor