As the 10bet Lions begin a new chapter, the Official Lions Collectors’ Yearbook 2026/27 will bring an unforgettable rugby year home this December—a Christmas gift for supporters, and an invitation for businesses to stand beside the players.
Supporting the Lions brings a particular kind of loyalty. It survives the drive home after a defeat. It lives in a jersey that has seen better days, in a family argument over selection, in the stubborn certainty that next Saturday might give you something you will remember for the rest of your life.
You cannot manufacture that feeling. You inherit it, or someone takes you to Ellis Park and you discover it for yourself.
As the 10bet Lions step into the 2026/27 season, that connection deserves something supporters can hold. This December, the Official Lions Collectors’ Yearbook 2026/27, published by SportsRapt, will celebrate the people and performances behind the badge. Covering the 2025/26 campaign, August’s extraordinary All Blacks encounter, and the squad taking the club into 2027, it brings a remarkable period together in one volume.
For anyone who has ever risen from an Ellis Park seat before the ball reached the tryline, these pages will feel familiar.
Start with the evening the impossible became imaginable.
On 25 August, the Lions scored five converted tries against the All Blacks at Ellis Park. They led 21–17 at half-time and stretched that advantage to 35–17. Nico Steyn and Siba Mahashe struck early. Later, a powerful scrum sent Francke Horn over, and a famous rugby name suddenly faced a very uncomfortable scoreboard.
New Zealand recovered to win 41–35. The Lions had taken them somewhere few expected them to go.
The defeat still hurt. An eighteen-point advantage makes the missed opportunity sharper. Yet the ambition of that performance belongs in the record too: the willingness to attack, the conviction at scrum time, the sight of Lions players making accomplished internationals chase the game.
Imagine opening those pages years from now and remembering the moment you began to believe they could actually do it. That is what a yearbook should preserve: the feeling before the final score settled everything.
The wider 2025/26 campaign deserves the same attention. The Lions reached their first United Rugby Championship quarter-final, crossing a threshold that had repeatedly remained beyond them. That achievement gave supporters something tangible to build their expectations around.
Fidelity SecureDrive Lions vs Glasgow Warriors
Lions’ Morne van den Berg scores his sides sixth try of the match
Mandatory Credit ©INPHO/Steve Haag Sports/Christiaan Kotze
Progress carries an obligation. Having reached the knockout stages, this team must now pursue the consistency that makes returning there an expectation. Supporters understand the difference between promise and fulfilment. Their loyalty earns them the right to demand more.
A worthwhile account of the season should respect that intelligence. Celebrate the breakthroughs. Examine the difficult afternoons. Give the reader the full weight of what was attempted and what remains unfinished.
At the centre of this yearbook will be profiles of every Lions player. A squad list tells you who is available for selection. A player profile should help explain why you care when that name is called.
Morné van den Berg. Francke Horn. The established figures whose movements supporters recognise instantly, and the emerging players still earning that recognition. Each belongs within the story. The jersey carries a collective identity, but someone has to pull it over his head and accept the responsibility that comes with it.
The photography will give those pages their immediacy. In an action photograph, concentration becomes visible: eyes fixed on a passing channel, fingers opening around the ball, a body braced for contact. A portrait asks the reader to pause and look at the person who must make those decisions under pressure.
These are the images that deserve room on a printed page. Let the reader study them. Let a young supporter find a favourite player and return to that photograph until the corners of the page begin to soften.
The book will also look forward. Boan Venter’s arrival adds weight to the new season’s ambitions, alongside recruits including Sikhumbuzo Notshe and Boeta Chamberlain. Their challenge is to turn fresh opportunity into performances that matter. The 2026/27 preview will introduce the new signings and the squad carrying Lions hopes into 2027.
For businesses, there is a direct invitation to take a place in this publication: advertise opposite a Lions player profile.
That positioning gives an advertisement a clear setting, beside the player a supporter has chosen to read about. It offers a business space within a keepsake intended to be opened again, shared and kept. The strongest advertisements will understand that relationship and speak to supporters with the same care the editorial brings to the rugby.
We are looking for advertisers who want to support the publication of these profiles and put their businesses beside the Lions story. An established company with deep Johannesburg roots has a reason to be there. So does an ambitious smaller business whose owners have followed this team for years.
The invitation is personal: if this club means something to you, help give its players the pages they deserve.
Then comes December, and the pleasure of choosing a Christmas present that needs very little explanation.
A father opens the wrapping and recognises the colours. A daughter finds the player she watches every weekend. A supporter living overseas places a small piece of Johannesburg on the coffee table. Long after Christmas lunch, there is still another photograph to examine, another match to revisit, another name to discuss.
That is the purpose of this collectors’ yearbook: to give the season a lasting place in the lives of the people who cared about it.
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The next campaign will bring its own demands. There will be selections to debate and results that test everybody’s patience. There will also be that familiar walk towards the ground, with hope gathering again.
This December, make room for the Lions story at home.
Order your collectors’ yearbook or enquire about advertising opposite a player profile at lionsyearbook.sportsrapt.com.
