AS THE Lions management last night studied the video of incidents in the match against Northern Free State, which manager Fran Cotton described "as wholly unacceptable", the Northern Free State manager-coach Pote Human said he could not believe that the Lions were complaining.
Cotton did not mask his feelings or mince his words at the post-match press conference. "The pitch was hard and dangerous and there were incidents in that match that went unpenalised by a referee who was clearly not up to the standard required. We should not have to put up with that," said Cotton.
"There were two or three instances in that match where our players were stamped on and no action was taken. We have a responsibility to our players. We had to send an ear load of our players back immediately after the match for treatment. We will be studying a video of the match and may well decide to cite players in the Northern Free State team. We have 24 hours before we have to make a decision on that. Our players did extremely well to maintain their discipline."
Human's response was to dismiss completely any suggestion that his players were guilty of foul play. "This comes as a complete surprise to us. I cannot believe what they are saying. Our players were not guilty of foul play."
Free State captain Jurie Jerling said: "This comes as a big surprise to us. I think they are allowed to do things by referees, like killing the ball, and are not being penalised. We will also look at the video."
Human then returned to the theme. We play it hard but fair. We endeavour to get the ball when players clutter up the situation in the rucks. There has been no foul play from our side.
Four Lions players were injured in the match. Tony Underwood has a dead leg; Jason Leonard, who went off in the match, a thigh injury; hooker Mark Regan has a shin injury and Kyran Bracken, who made his debut at scrum- half, had to go off in the second half with a shoulder injury.
On the Lions performance, coach Ian McGeechan said: "Some of our tries were very well constructed and the support work was very good. But we were too loose at times. I think the concentration slipped a little."
