Hawies Fourie believes Ruan Pienaar’s experience was pivotal in engineering Toyota Cheetahs’ memorable comeback victory over South African rivals Isuzu Southern Kings.

Springbok veteran Pienaar kicked two late conversions to complete the turnaround after coming off the bench on 50 minutes, crushing Kings hearts at the eleventh hour to lift Cheetahs up to third in the Conference A table.

Robbi Kempson’s side had led 30-17 with just under ten minutes remaining in Port Elizabeth, before a late Rhyno Smith double gave Pienaar the opportunity to kick Cheetahs to victory.

And Fourie, whose team have now won five Guinness PRO14 matches this season, says the scrum-half’s experience was what propelled Cheetahs to glory in the Eastern Cape.

“It is great to have a guy with that sort of experience and I trust in him taking that kick,” he said.

“It is the difference between five log points and two log points – it was a really important kick for us.

“I’ve been with Ruan in Cardiff on the media day and in some of the interviews we were together – they asked him in two of the interviews about kicks he converted in finals under pressure.

“I didn’t hope it would be that close but we expected it to be a close game – it is always a dogfight here, the Kings played really well and we made a lot of mistakes that gave them points, especially in the first half.

80' | Incredible kick by Ruan Pienaar and what a JUMP by Rhyno Smith.

Pienaar gets the winning point for @CheetahsRugby!
FINAL SCORE 3️⃣0️⃣ - 3️⃣1️⃣#GUINNESSPRO14 pic.twitter.com/k463R8IwGq
— Toyota Cheetahs (@CheetahsRugby) January 25, 2020

“There was three soft tries we gave them that made the game difficult for us.

“I feel especially in the first half they dominated the contact on attack and defence, and their line-out functioned well.

“They had us under pressure for moments in the game – they are definitely making progress, there is a nice vibe in the camp and they will do well going forward.”

The hosts had raced into an early lead after 13 points from fly-half Bader Pretorius, with Cheetahs’ reply through Sintu Manjezi being cancelled out by Stefan Ungerer’s score just after half-time.

Manjezi and John Jackson then exchanged tries with half an hour remaining before Cheetahs’ Wilmar Arnoldi further reduced the deficit, setting the stage for a final onslaught that the visitors executed with aplomb.

And Kings boss Kempson lamented his team’s inability to hold onto their lead, pinpointing individual errors as being central to their downfall.

“It’s probably more anger than heartbreak – that is a game we could have, should have, did not win,” he said.

“But individual mistakes cost the team and we have to look at those individual mistakes and make adjustments for the sake of the team – that is much more important than the individual.

Both young and old have been entertained by a thriller in this SA derby today. Thank you all for the support. pic.twitter.com/YM6owbcfzP
— Isuzu Southern Kings (@SouthernKingsSA) January 25, 2020

“All their points came from our mistakes – they never created anything with regard to scoring tries, other than the rolling maul.

“I think we had the upper hand on defence, physically we were harder than them and you could see that from the number of guys who went off the field.

“Losing in the last minute is heart-breaking but from my perspective and the team perspective, they let one get away that they should have comfortably won.

“They put themselves in a good position to do that, but unfortunately a few errors crept in the latter part and that unfortunately gave us the result we didn’t want.”