The Lions will return to South Africa on the back foot and with much to fix if they hope to have a say in the latter stages of the United Rugby Championship (URC) and Challenge Cup.

They crashed to a 43-24 defeat at the hands of Connacht in Galway on Saturday night, leaving them with a record of one win and three defeats from their month-long tour.

In fact, the two defeats against the Stormers and the Sharks stretches that away run to five losses and a win over their last half a dozen games.

For a franchise living on the edge, their crippling injury list did not help and they are likely to have more players in the infirmary with centre Henco van Wyk and lock Darrien Landsberg limping off in Galway.

In truth though, they were downed by a team that played with greater vigour and vitality and though the visitors held the lead briefly they were no match for the home team.

“Their skill level is higher. If you give them time and space you are going to chase your tail the whole night. That's what we did,” noted defence coach Jaque Fourie.

He added that the Lions did not carry the ball in the right areas of the field and that naiveté contributed to their demise.

“The Connacht boys played well,” acknowledged their Springbok flank Jaco Kriel. “It was almost as if they took a page out of the Munster game which was our first one on tour.

“They outplayed us. We couldn't get off the line. They made a lot of line breaks and got a lot of momentum. It made it really difficult for us tonight.”

That passiveness in defence was mirrored by the hosts routinely beating them to the punch in the line-out.

To be fair, Connacht are the second-most proficient team at stealing line-out ball in the competition.

Fourie acknowledged they will have to hit the reset button on their return and fix several shortcomings in their game.

They will be mightily relieved to return home.

“It was really tough,” Kriel said about their six games away, four of which were abroad. “We would have travelled over 100 hours just over the last four weeks. It's not just tough being away from home but travelling all the time.

“Travel fatigue is not an excuse. Most of the teams have to do it and you have to get up every weekend.

“I don't think it will happen again,” said Fourie who explained Worcester Warriors and Wasps' dropping out of the Challenge Cup due to financial distress brought about a unique set of circumstances.

“The travelling has been tough. When you are losing it is even tougher.”