The People Who Built the Season

Every yearbook gives its pages to the players, and it should. But the 2025/26 season was not won by a starting fifteen. It was won by a coaching and support group that took a side which had lost its first three matches and turned it into the first Lions team to win URC silverware.

IVAN VAN ROOYEN, HEAD COACH. The season began with three defeats in nine days in Europe and ended with a trophy, a play-off place and Champions Cup qualification. It is difficult to think of a more complete answer to a bad start. Van Rooyen continues into 2026/27.

THE COACHING GROUP. Ricardo Loubscher works with the backline, attack and skills. Julian Redelinghuys coaches the scrum, which returned a 93 per cent success rate across the URC season. Wessel Roux coaches the lineout. Jaque Fourie takes defence. Morne Steyn is kicking consultant, and the Lions landed 21 of 25 penalties in the league campaign.

That is a coaching box containing a great deal of Springbok experience, and the fingerprints of it are visible in the numbers. A side that conceded fewer penalties than any other club in the United Rugby Championship — 167, with just five lineout offences all season — is a coached side.

PERFORMANCE AND MEDICINE. Stefan van Deventer is Head of Performance and Chris Venter Performance Analyst. Kyle Peyper runs strength and conditioning. Pam Watts is Head of Medical, with Ruan Genis as team doctor, Jose Cox as physiotherapist and Ram Khumalo as massage therapist. Between September and June this group carried a squad through eighteen URC rounds, four Challenge Cup matches, a quarter-final, two long-haul European trips and a Currie Cup campaign. Availability is a coaching outcome, and the Lions had it when it mattered.

THE ORGANISATION. Mustapha Boomgaard is team manager and Johane Singwane team assistant — the two people who make everything above possible and are thanked least often.

THE FIDELITY ADT LIONS. The Currie Cup programme is run by Mziwakhe Nkosi as head coach, with Wessel Roux taking forwards alongside a mental and life-coaching brief, and Wynand Ellis on backline and attack. Dr Anri Collins is team doctor, Carol Dickson massage therapist, MJ Rabodiba team manager and Bestall Mondo his assistant.

That group's job is harder than the results table suggests. It develops the players the senior squad draws on, in a competition the Lions have won eleven times and where nothing less than a final is ever considered acceptable in Johannesburg.

TWENTY-TWO PEOPLE. One Shield, one quarter-final, one Champions Cup place. Thank you.