Three Defeats in Europe

The fixture list sent the Lions north in September 2025 and they came back with nothing. Three matches, three defeats, and inside that run a loss to Zebre Parma — the first time in the club's history the Italian side had beaten them.

There is no useful way to dress that up, and this yearbook is not going to try. A tour that yields nothing tells you something about a squad's readiness, its depth, and its ability to win away from a familiar altitude and a familiar crowd. In September 2025 all three of those answers were uncomfortable.

What is more interesting is what the group did with the information. Early-season tours are the URC's peculiar cruelty for South African sides: travel, unfamiliar conditions, a compressed run of matches, and opponents at home in every sense. The Lions had been through versions of it four times before and it had contributed to four seasons outside the play-offs.

The difference in 2025/26 was that the tour did not set the ceiling. It set the floor. When the side returned to Johannesburg in October the response was immediate: the Scarlets beaten 29-18 at Ellis Park on 18 October, and from there a home run that would define the campaign.

By the end of the season the Lions had ten wins, a draw and 54 log points. Strip the opening three matches out and the record reads better than most sides in the competition. Nobody gets to strip them out — but nobody had to carry them either.

Van Rooyen's side spent the rest of the year proving that September was a starting position, not a verdict.